No 10 liaises with Australia's Macquarie Group over £10bn investment

Sunday 06 February 2022 9:42 am

No 10 is in talks with Australian financial services group Macquarie over a possible £10bn investment in the UK’s infrastructure – the largest investment ever made by a foreign company.

Downing Street officials have been negotiating with the bank’s management for the past few weeks, Sky News has learnt, to divide the £10bn between existing as well as new projects in the renewable energy and communications sectors.

According to Sky News sources, the deal was supposed to be announced during Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s trip to Australia in mid-February, but as a result of the ‘partygate’ and the consequent domestic crisis, the trip was postponed.

The £10bn capital injection – a mix of capital from its balance sheet and funds it manages – is part of Macquarie’s UK strategy, as in the last few years it has already invested £50bn in the country.

“It’s our hub for operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa and we’ve been proud to invest over £50bn in critical UK infrastructure in recent years,” Macquire said in a statement.

“Over the next few years, we’ll progress important new investments in communities from Southampton to Orkney, in vital new infrastructure from offshore wind to ultra-fast broadband.”

The bank made UK headlines in 2017 when it acquired Green Investment Bank, which was launched in 2012 by the UK Government as the world’s first green infrastructure investment bank.

Macquire’s acquisition – which cost £2.3bn – caused a stir as critics dubbed the deal as “politically ambiguous”.