Best Infrastructure and project finance house: Société Générale CIB |
|
Also shortlisted: Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ and HSBC |
Some $57 trillion of infrastructure investment is needed across the world between now and 2030 simply to keep pace with GDP growth, according to McKinsey Global Institute, the business and economics research unit of the consultancy.
That is nearly 60% more than the $36 trillion spent globally on infrastructure over the past 18 years when – except in the past five years – long-term debt financing from the global banking sector was cheap and plentiful.
In the post-crisis era, this type of financing is both expensive and fundamentally constrained, creating a financial challenge for world governments.
Increasingly, the capital markets and institutional investors such as insurance companies and big-beast asset managers are directly filling the void, but for now dollar-denominated bank lending remains the primary source of financing globally.
Given this, it might seem surprising that a French bank that has a natural funding base in euros and is today more selective in how it deploys its balance sheet to infrastructure projects worldwide can be recognized for this global award.