Swiss bank UBS has attracted $1.5 billion to its new global infrastructure fund. “John Fraser, chairman and chief executive office of the UBS AG’s funds arm, said … he was encouraged by the demand from long-term institutional investors, including pension funds and sovereign wealth funds,” the Journal reports.
Fraser’s mention of pension funds raises an interesting question. In America, public-sector unions are big beneficiaries of pension funds. The trustees of such pension funds, often elected officials, depend on union support.
Will public pension fund trustees put their funds’ money in infrastructure ventures like the UBS one without assurances that such ventures won’t result in the loss of union jobs, even through attrition, at privately managed infrastructure projects in the United States?
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