According to a report by DLA Piper, ‘UK Infrastructure: Defining the Future’, 86% of the 50 major UK infrastructure investors it spoke to said that there is too much politicisation of infrastructure decisions in the UK. 70% said this had deterred them from investing.
The UK needs more infrastructure investment as it lags behind its peers, according to the OECD. The good news is, that the DLA Piper report found that “despite the uncertainty created by Brexit”, 84% of investors are interested in UK-based projects, ahead of the US (66%) and Australia (59%). In comparison, emerging economies attract less interest, with only 54% interested in projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and 48% in Latin America.
The interesting thing from a B2B telecoms perspective is that telecoms sits in the middle of the table of potential investment targets. Whereas 13% of investors are looking at the UK telecoms sector, 27% are looking at energy and 27% at transport.
Investment targets, by propensity to invest
=1 Energy and Transport (27%)
3. Housing (18%)
4. Telecoms (13%)
5. Health (11%)
6. Education (4%)
7. Flood Defences (2%).
Investors are generally positive about the prospects for the UK, with 66% believing returns will increase and 84% planning to invest the same or more in the next 5 years. Investors pick out the following targets of investment as being particularly interesting opportunities in the UK:
- smart cities
- electric cars/autonomous vehicles
- high-speed rail
- energy.
Since this is where the smart money is going, it begs the question: have B2B service providers got the same targets on their vertical solutions list?
