One reason investors find it difficult to classify infrastructure is that it exhibits qualities of several asset classes. Many institutional investors view infrastructure as a subset of commercial real estate: physical, real, tangible assets generating cash flows.

The launch of this new newsletter, Institutional Investing in Infrastructure, is a timely one. As evidence of a large infrastructure backlog in the United States and a public funding shortfall become clearer, the opportunity infrastructure investment holds has begun to be realized among U.S. institutional investors. What may be less understood is the range of risk and return in infrastructure investing.

The global expansion in infrastructure investment that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in September 1989 and lasted through the late 1990s was one of the most prolific global infrastructure cycles in history. The rapid expansion of global infrastructure asset formation that dominated the 1990s boom was highly susceptible to rapid currency devaluation, high leverage, commodity price risk and broken regulatory regimes.