The following article is the fifth of several excerpts that will appear in i3 from U.K. Infrastructure Investment and Finance from a European and Global Perspective. The report with footnotes and references is available at www.georginderst.com or the SSRN https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2972704. This study provides an overview of the financing of infrastructure investment in the United Kingdom in a European, global and historical context. The fifth excerpt from the report focuses on institutional investors as financiers in U.K. infrastructure.

Institutional investors traditionally play an important role in the United Kingdom for capital markets and the economy. However, the importance of U.K. institutional investors on the U.K. stock market has been falling for some time. U.K. insurance companies held about 6 percent of the U.K. stock market in 2014, U.K. pension funds about 3 percent, which is much less than in the 1980s.

The main