Reflections on the election

Infrastructure is the new buzzword in finance these days even though infrastructure has been important at least since the days when the Romans built their roads across Britain and Europe. The difference today is that increasingly the government says it cannot finance such infrastructure - roads, railways, power generation, telecoms, airports etc. The telecoms industry is already completely privately owned in most countries as are an increasing number of airports across the world. But governments everywhere are now looking ever more to public private partnerships (PPPs) to provide the annual funding (the annual revenues required to service bank loan and bond interest payments and capital repayments and equity dividends) as well as the actual financing (the arranging of bank loans, bond issues and equity share issues) to provide the cash up-front.

Award winning research “The Price of Sin Aversion” by ICMA Centre Associate Professor of Finance Andreas Hoepner and co-author Hampus Adamsson has hit the headlines this week, with the Financial Times featuring an article about it in their paper on Monday.

An unprecedented new study by academics at the Henley Business School into financial risk has shown that while women remain significantly more risk averse than men in the investment domain, the disparity is declining.