Having devised an innovative investment model to enable private capital to partner with the community sector to fund the provision of affordable rental homes to eligible key workers and their families, Lighthouse made a submission as part of the consultation process on the amendments to the Housing Australia Investment Mandate Direction.  In addition to outlining a number of areas where Lighthouse is supportive of the draft Investment Mandate, the submission includes a range of concerns and challenges identified with the draft Investment Mandate. The submission also lists a number of suggestions for efficiency of implementation, value for money for public sector funding and meeting the objective of encouraging private sector investment in social and affordable housing.

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As an early participant and one of the largest investors in the SDA sector, Lighthouse Infrastructure made a submission to the NDIS 2023 SDA Pricing Review.

Critical to the success of the SDA program is the development of the market, as envisaged in the 2016 report by the NDIS, and participation by institutional investors in the funding of SDA. It is critical that the market has confidence in the framework underpinning investment in the sector, including related policy stability and intent.

Institutional investors have extensive opportunities to allocate capital across infrastructure sectors throughout Australia and offshore. The 2023 Pricing Review presents an important opportunity for the NDIS to reinforce the investment efficacy and social importance of investment in SDA.

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AUTHORS:
Dr Larry Beeferman and Dr Allan Wain

ABSTRACT:
This essay is most immediately about reliance on and the relationship among three discourses framed with reference to that which is deemed or thought to be “real”. One involves arguments within the context of pension-fund decision-making as to the potential importance of investment in “real assets,” among them, infrastructure as a real asset. Another pertains to debates about the role of “finance” in an economy, especially at the extreme insofar as it entails what some have referred to as “financialization” specifically as it is cast in terms of a problematic relationship between the sphere of finance and that of the “real economy.” A third involves discussion about investment decision-making undertaken with a conscious reference to settling upon them in light of an understanding of what Islam requires, permits, or bars – an exercise which falls under the broader rubric of “Islamic finance” – more particularly, the significance of “real assets” to that understanding.
For the most part, the paper is focused on the third topic, the meaning and import of making investments offered within the context of Islamic finance. That meaning and import necessarily varies with the vantage point of those persons or organizations contemplating investments of that sort. They depend upon whether the person considering investment in some way embraces Islam; if so, how he or she accepts it, that is, how it shapes his view of the world and his or her place in it, and what it expects, encourages, or requires of him or her in diverse ways (including making of investments); if not, in what respects, how thinking (and acting) in such terms might, nonetheless be relevant, useful, and perhaps even potentially important. Our discussion is grounded in the latter vantage point though it necessarily entails an alertness to and appreciation of the other.

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AUTHOR: Mitchell King

ABSTRACT: The Australian infrastructure market is participating in a global energy transformation that will have a profound effect on our economy and financial markets.
It is highly likely that financial markets are currently mispricing climate change risk. Over the next decade mainstream financial markets will progressively rebalance their portfolios away from fossil fuel exposures and increasingly redirect capital to non-fossil fuel exposures and direct investment in renewables. Superannuation fund members are urging their trustees take action and require companies disclose their carbon impacts.
Australian investors are becoming interested in investment in the solar sector as it exhibits many of the characteristics prevalent in the early years of Infrastructure investment in Australia. These factors include long term contracted revenues, high operating margins and returns which are often CPI linked and not correlated to traditional equity or bond markets. It is however early days and infrastructure managers are applying their skills to aggregate solar infrastructure investment opportunities to capture the interest of mainstream institutional investors.
Investors are now actively seeking commercial returns from investments on offer in the Australian solar industry. In so doing, investors are able to powerfully apply their capital to achieve long term environmental and social benefits and accelerate Australia’s transition from fossil fuels toward a lower carbon society.

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AUTHORS:
Dr Larry Beeferman and Dr Allan Wain

ABSTRACT:
The focus of the paper is on retirement plans whose members derive financial claims directly or indirectly from financial investments made by them or by others on their behalf (as contrasted with what are termed “pay-as-you-go” plans). Central to the efficacy of funded plans are the roles and responsibilities of those with ultimate authority to make the required investment- related decisions and effective fulfillment of them by those to whom we refer to as “investment decision-makers”.) Although the matter of efficacy quite obviously is rooted in concern for sought-for outcomes for individual plan members there are also significant implications for the larger economy and society. Discussion with respect to those roles and responsibilities often falls in whole or part under the rubric of what is termed “fiduciary duty”; however, there are other important and related roles and responsibilities which occasion the choice of title for the paper.
More particularly, it considers key issues encompassed by discourse in India and the United States pertaining to fiduciary duty as they concern investment decision makers. In part the premise is that there can be much that each country can learn from the other in view of their different experiences in that regard. In part it is also in recognition of the fact that retirement plans in each country have made or may make investments in the other and that insofar as such investments might be mutually desirable having a sufficient understanding of how fiduciary duty shapes the expectations and channels the needs of plan members is critical to achievement of that shared goal. In our view the available literature in these terms has been modest indeed so in a number of respects it has been unchartered territory. Moreover, the retirement systems in both countries are composed of a range of rather different kinds of plans, many of which have a rich and varied history and diverse associated institutions, policies, and practices the attributes of which are not immediately or readily made transparent or accessible, especially to those in another country.
With that in mind, this paper sets the stage for and makes an initial foray into debate in both countries in relevant terms, identifying key concepts and modes of thinking and implementation. We strive to flesh out the foregoing by an in-depth illustrative discussion of the issues as they relate to one important kind of plan within the retirement system of each country. We do so with any eye to structuring the analysis to establish the basis for an inquiry in a subsequent essay with not only potentially greater depth but also a broader reach in terms of the types of plans canvassed. In the concluding section of this paper we offer what might be termed observations but which may also be viewed as recommendations for others concerned with these issues, especially those with authority as to what fiduciary duty should entail. That being said we do so recognizing that given the distinctive experience of each country those observations (or recommendations) may have greater or less import or play out in a different way.

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AUTHORS:
Dr Larry Beeferman and Dr Allan Wain

ABSTRACT:
This paper has three main parts. First, we briefly explore arguments grounded in fiduciary duty (and others within the “shadow” of law) as well as others rooted in the real-world social, political, and other environment in which pension funds may operate which might justify why they might make or recognize such commitments.
Second, we explore in great depth how pension funds might proceed in those terms. We discuss the standards, criteria, etc. of which pension funds might take to take account or apply. But we suggest that the major challenge relates to the systems, processes, capacities, resources, etc. which they have in place to ensure fulfillment of that commitment. In turn we describe and analyze the extensive experience in these terms of other major financial institutions, namely, international development finance institutions (DFIs), for example, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and somewhat similar national ones well that of the financial institution signatories (EPFIs) to what are termed the so-called Equator Principles (EP).
We then canvas important “cross-cutting issues”, ones which play out among many investors, for example, the matter of the relationship between how environmental and social considerations are addressed in investments and the financial performance of those investments. We also take a close look at practice relating to implementation of one aspect of standards involving social considerations, namely, labor-related standards. In addition, we draw on the relatively greater transparency of a large Dutch pension fund to offer some insights into how it goes about translating its commitments into action.
The last part of the essays distills from the preceding ones a series of “lessons learned.” That is, it offers recommendations as to what pension funds might need or want to think and then, what they might need or want to do should they choose to adopt standards relating to environmental and social considerations and, in turn, pursue a serious-minded effort to assure that those standards are met.

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AUTHORS:
Dr Larry Beeferman and Dr Allan Wain

ABSTRACT:
This paper builds upon the understanding of infrastructure developed in “Infrastructure: Defining Matters.” Through a primarily case study approach it explores in-depth a particular method of deciding upon infrastructure investments and identifies ways that decision-making can be strengthened drawing upon that understanding and a revised version of the linked categories for analysis based on them, which were described in the previous publication.

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AUTHORS:
Dr Larry Beeferman and Dr Allan Wain

ABSTRACT:
This paper is resource for pension funds in two ways. One is to help them gain a more useful understanding of what infrastructure “is” or might be believed to “be.” The other is to suggest how that understanding relates to ways of thinking about infrastructure and how those ways, in turn, are linked to choices about infrastructure investments for their portfolios. The analysis and findings are based in part on a survey of U.S. public sector pension funds which have made such investments.

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