英国应向中国学习基建投资

Thirty years ago it took eight hours to drive the 150km from Beijing to Tianjin, China’s fourth city. A decade or so ago, motorway investment had cut the time to two hours. Today, by bullet train, the journey is barely 30 minutes.

北京到天津的距离是150公里，30年前，如果驱车的话需要8个小时。大约十年前，高速公路的投资让这一时间缩短至两个小时。如今，如果乘坐高铁的话，时间仅为30分钟。

When infrastructure investment is made in developing economies, the gains are dramatic and obvious. But Gerry Grimstone, the chairman of Standard Life, the UK insurer whose Chinese headquarters sits in Tianjin, is convinced that Britain and other developed nations can learn the lessons, too.

在发展中经济体进行基础设施投资，将会取得巨大而明显的收益。但英国保险公司标准人寿(Standard Life)的董事长格里•格里姆斯通(Gerry Grimstone)确信，英国和其他发达国家也可以从中学习经验。标准人寿在中国的总部位于天津。

He is not alone. Legal & General has already made a big push into the area. In January, it announced a commitment to put £1.5bn into a projected £15bn scheme to promote housing and infrastructure regeneration. Nigel Wilson, L&G’s CEO, who has led a shift in investment allocation towards such assets, has been a vocal campaigner.

有这种想法的并非他一人。英国法通保险集团(Legal & General)已经大举进军这一领域。今年1月，该公司承诺将为一个拟投资150亿英镑的住房和基础设施重建项目出资15亿英镑。法通保险首席执行官纳杰尔•威尔逊(Nigel Wilson)一直大力呼吁投资于基础设施项目，他也率先将投资配置转向此类资产。

Prudential and Aviva, the UK’s other leading insurers, have been lower key, but they, too, have been supportive.

英国其他主要保险商保诚集团(Prudential)和英杰华(Aviva)较为低调，但他们也支持这种投资。

The dynamic is simple enough. Central banks have held interest rates at ultra-low levels, trimming the yields available from safe sovereign bonds close to zero in many cases. At the same time, insurers and pension funds need investments that promise reliable long-term returns.

这种投资背后的动机非常简单。各国央行将利率保持在超低水平，让许多国家的安全主权债券的收益率降至零。与此同时，保险公司和养老基金需要有望带来长期可靠回报的投资。

Infrastructure investment, whether in emerging markets or in the west, is an obvious match. Lengthy projects to build roads, railways, airports and energy installations often have the right kind of steady returns, with a duration that lines up well with commitments to pay out life assurance or pension policies 10, 20 or 30 years hence.

无论是在新兴市场还是在西方，基础设施投资显然都符合这一条件。建设公路、铁路、机场和能源装置的长期项目通常拥有合适的稳定回报，时间周期也与人寿保险或养老保险金的10年、20年或30年的偿付承诺相匹配。

At the same time, there is a financing gap. One legacy of the financial crisis has been banks’ retreat from project finance of this kind. Few lenders these days will take long-term investments on to their balance sheets. Even as counterparties who structure a deal and underpin it with short-term bridge finance, banks are in short supply. This is partly a result of a shrunken risk appetite across banking. It is also thanks to tougher capital charges on such assets, imposed by global regulators.

与此同时，基础设施建设存在资金上的缺口。金融危机的一个后遗症是银行不再为此类项目提供融资。现在很少有银行愿意为长期投资融资。即便是作为安排交易并提供短期过桥资金支持的对手方，银行也多有不愿。这在一定程度上是整个银行业风险偏好下降的结果，同时也缘于全球监管机构收紧了对此类资产的资本要求。

The need is vast. In a report published just as the financial crisis hit, the OECD predicted a need for $50tn of global infrastructure funding by 2030. How to reconcile these record investment demands with the scant supply evident in the traditional financing landscape?

需求是巨大的。经合组织(OECD)在金融危机爆发之际发布的一份报告中预测，到2030年全球基础设施融资需求将达到50万亿美元。如何协调这些创纪录的投资需求与传统金融领域明显的供应匮乏？

The answer often has been to turn to parts of the world that have investment surpluses — the sovereign wealth funds of the Middle East and Asia, as well as the pension fund systems of Canada and Australia.

答案往往是求助于投资资金过剩的某些国家——中东地区和亚洲的主权财富基金——以及加拿大和澳大利亚的养老金体系。

For a while it worked well. Multibillion-dollar SWFs could deal direct with government to finance whole projects, reducing the need for complex structuring. Yet finding funds abroad has sometimes proved problematic. Investment in the £24.5bn Hinkley point nuclear expansion project in southwest England, run by France’s EDF, has been held up because of wrangling between the energy group and potential Chinese investors.

这种做法一度很有效。拥有数十亿美元的主权财富基金可以直接与各国政府接触来为整个项目融资，从而不必进行复杂的结构性安排。然而事实证明，寻找海外资金有时也会有麻烦。由于运营方法国电力集团(EDF)和潜在的中国投资者的角力，位于英格兰西南部的造价245亿英镑的欣克利角(Hinkley Point)核电站扩建项目的投资被搁置。

Where is the UK money? To date, L&G has done the most in this area, investing £5.7bn across a swath of property and infrastructure projects. But that is still barely 1 per cent of assets under management. Even its ambitious £15bn new scheme, which has yet to draw in the necessary partners, would not compete for the really large-scale national projects, focusing instead on £300-500m investments.

英国的资金哪里去了？截至目前，法通保险在这个领域中的动作最大，它拿出57亿英镑投资于众多房地产和基础设施项目。但这只是其管理资产的1%。甚至其雄心勃勃、迄今仍在寻找必要合作者的150亿英镑新投资计划，也不会竞争真正大规模的国家项目，而是聚焦于3亿英镑至5亿英镑的投资。

For the £1bn or £5bn-plus projects, single insurers or pension funds need to team up. Someone just needs to co-ordinate the effort. Bank investors used to do that, as did old-style merchant banks. There are few individuals pioneering the mission from the public sector side either. It is not a coincidence that the UK’s most ambitious project — London’s Crossrail west-to-east train link — has been shepherded by Boris Johnson who even critics would admit has been an unusually energetic force for change in the capital.

对10亿英镑或50亿英镑以上的项目来说，单个的保险公司或养老基金需要合作。需要有人协调这种努力。银行投资者曾经充当过协调人，就像旧式的商业银行那样。如今在公共部门中也很少有人愿意成为承担这一使命的先锋。英国最为雄心勃勃的项目——伦敦横贯铁路(Crossrail)——一直由鲍里斯•约翰逊(Boris Johnson)负责，这并非巧合，即便是批评者也承认，对于推动伦敦的改变，约翰逊是一股精力异常旺盛的力量。

The plan for an Infrastructure Commission from the opposition Labour party sounds encouraging. It is pledging an aggressive agenda of investment in energy, flood defences and transport, and sounds more substantive than the Treasury’s largely administrative arm, Infrastructure UK.

反对党工党提出的设立基础设施委员会(Infrastructure Commission)的计划听起来令人振奋。它承诺大举投资于能源、防洪和交通基础设施，听起来比英国财政部下属主要负责行政的Infrastructure UK更着眼实际。

This week’s Budget from chancellor George Osborne will give the current government a last chance to inject some urgency into UK infrastructure investment. Done right, the spoils should be rich — both for investors and those who long for a country as joined up as modern China.

英国财政大臣乔治•奥斯本(George Osborne)将会在本周宣布预算案，这将是现任政府提高英国基础设施投资紧迫性的最后机会。运作得当的话，好处是巨大的，无论是对投资者，还是对那些渴望英国像现代化的中国那样交通发达的人来说，均是如此。