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Downing Street is in talks with Macquarie Group, the Australian lender, to secure a headline-grabbing £10bn investment in British infrastructure that would represent one of the largest-ever such commitments by an overseas company.
Sky News has learnt that officials at Number 10 have been negotiating with executives at the bank about the plan – which would be earmarked for energy and digital infrastructure projects – for a number of weeks.
An announcement was expected to be made during a state visit to Australia by the prime minister, which had been tentatively scheduled for the middle of this month.
The trip has now been postponed, owing to Mr Johnson’s domestic crisis and mounting challenges on the international stage, but is expected to be rearranged if he survives the immediate threat of a leadership challenge, according to insiders
Sources said the £10bn figure comprised a range of renewable energy investments, a number of which have already been publicly announced by Macquarie, as well as several new projects in energy and the communications infrastructure sectors.
Macquarie has become a prolific investor in Britain, claiming to have ploughed more than £50bn into UK infrastructure projects in recent years.
In 2017, it bought the government’s Green Investment Bank in a controversial deal that was accused of short-changing UK taxpayers.
The GIB has since been renamed the Green Investment Group, which makes up the bulk of Macquarie’s renewables development division.
Securing sizeable inward investment cheques for British infrastructure has become a major priority for Downing Street officials as they seek to demonstrate Mr Johnson’s ability to act as a post-Brexit magnet for overseas capital.
Macquarie owns a range of assets in the UK, including KCOM, a fibre network in Hull and East Yorkshire, and a large stake in Southern Water.
Its role in accelerating fast-fibre and renewable energy in regions across Britain plays into the PM’s…
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Source : skynews
