Macquarie re-enters airport infra biz, to raise $2 bn early next year

Macquarie is all set to make a big comeback in airport infrastructure through investments from the Macquarie-SBI fund, which is hoping to reach the target of $2 billion in size by early 2010, double of what it raised till April.

After it lost out on the initial attempt some years ago to invest in the airport privatisation business, Macquarie is returning, having gained more experience in the Indian infra market now, than they had when the bids were thrown open in 2004.

Macquarie announced Varun Bajpai, who, so far, headed Macquarie Capital & Investment Banking as senior MD, will take additional charge as CEO of Macquarie-SBI Infra Fund. In due course, Macquarie will find a successor to Mr Bajpai for the investment banking business as the fund may even expand to $3 billion.

Macquarie will look at investing in unlisted arms of companies and doesn’t rule out potential investment opportunities in units or special purpose vehicles (SPVs) of existing infra majors. “We could look at SPVs as some of the large operators in India are listed firms with SPVs and those could be of great interest to us,” said Mr Bajpai.

A part of this opportunity for Macquarie lies with players like GMR and GVK, which are already running successful airports across metros like Delhi and Mumbai respectively . “At any point in time, we are usually talking about two or three opportunities with each one of these people,” said Mr Bajpai.