JPMorgan invest in Asia infrastructure

JPMorgan Asian Infrastructure Investments

JPMorgan, one of the oldest financial services firms in the world, has announced that US$215 million of its US$860 million Asian infrastructure fund has been spent in China and India.

Philip Jackson, chief of JPMorgan's Asia infrastructure investments group, told Reuters that although the company was concentrating on these two countries, it also had an eye on other investment opportunities throughout the continent.

"Clearly we anticipate China and India will be the two largest markets, but frankly we are anticipating we could be investing equally easily in Korea or in south-east Asia," he stated.

"Ten or 15 years ago, Asia was an optional, alternative investment as a geography. The teenager has come of age and I find it hard to believe that any global investor could really not have Asian investment as a core part of their holdings.

"Clearly we anticipate China and India will be the two largest markets, but frankly we are anticipating we could be investing equally easily in Korea or in Southeast Asia," Jackson added.

Global infrastructure assets

Amid an effort to complete investments within the next two years, Mr. Jackson also said that money had been invested in a water treatment company, Goldtrust Water, which operates in the Chinese region of Shenzhen, and in India's SevenHills Hospital, which is currently expanding in Mumbai.

In his statement to Reuters Mr. Jackson added that regions such as the province of Guizhuo in China will require a significant amount of infrastructure projects in the future, following JPMorgan's tendency in recent years to to invest in infrastructure in developing economies, due to their growth potential.

"(Guizhou) is about the size of California. It is very mountainous and it needs a lot of infrastructure. And the infrastructure is not going to be built if the cement isn't available," said Jackson, who has been living in Asia since 1993.

The fund also invested in a water treatment company that operates in China's southern boomtown of Shenzhen called Goldtrust Water, and India's SevenHills Hospital, which is expanding in Mumbai, he said.

Apart from the infrastructure fund JP Morgan, which has global assets of around US$43 billion in the real estate and infrastructure sectors, has a US$350 million Indian property fund and another one in China that raised US$600 million.

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Daniel Jones

Daniel is a Politics and Philosophy graduate from Cardiff University where he also worked as a section editor on the award winning student newspaper. After university he joined an IT support company where he was a B2B online writer. He loves anything to do with sport and joined GDS in July 2009.

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