Market Insight - Stocks, Bonds and Airports: Infrastructure Assets in Pension Plan Portfolios - January 2014

Jan 29, 2014

Infrastructure is challenging to model because, as a highly illiquid asset class, it lacks frequent, transaction-based data.   In this Market Insight, we look at two examples: the equity-like Sydney Airport and a bond-like investment in UK power-transmission lines.  We examine different ways to capture their risks using MSCI’s multi-asset class risk model, the Barra Integrated Model.  In both cases, characterizing the investments in terms of their exposures to factors in a well-built multi-asset class model is crucial if we are to understand infrastructure assets in a portfolio context.