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| Best Infrastructure and Project Finance House: Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group |
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| Also nominated: Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and HSBC |
A crisis can be a terrible thing to waste. While the retreat of some of the world’s biggest banks to their home markets has acutely affected the global project and infrastructure finance markets, the void is being swiftly filled by other eager lenders and, to some extent, the capital markets.
In the past year, this latter development has become increasingly visible, as those banks flush with liquidity and balance sheet capacity have waded in, while some project assets have been financed in the bond markets.
Capital markets financing is perhaps the next growth area in project and infrastructure finance, but it will be dwarfed by bank lending for some time yet.
As loans are the life-blood of this market, this plays perfectly to the world’s third-largest bank by deposits – Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
The Japanese bank has engaged in an aggressive growth strategy in project and infrastructure finance in the past couple of years, and in the past year alone has become the leading non-government-backed lender in the global market.