Institutional Real Estate, Inc. will host its 11th annual infrastructure conference in June — IREI: Infrastructure Strategies 2016 — and with the event on the horizon we recently held an initial conference call with our conference advisory board to learn what issues and topics are at the tops of their minds in 2016. These discussions provide insight into what is important to institutional investors such as public pension plans, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds who attend Infrastructure Strategies and what issues impact their portfolios and decision making — all of which helps the board shape the conference agenda.

The issues and trends impacting investor thinking and decision making, of course, are not static. They reflect changes in the market. What was important in 2006, when IREI hosted its first Infrastructure Strategies conference, is not necessarily important to investors attending in 2016. For example, investors on this year’s advisory conference