McArthur, Jenny;
(2023)
The UK Infrastructure Bank and the financialisation of public infrastructures amidst neoliberal-nationalism.
Competition & Change
(In press).
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Abstract
Literature on the financialisation of infrastructure gives limited attention to public banks. A stronger focus is needed to show how public banks can shape financialisation processes amidst evolving social, political and economic pressures. To address the gap in existing literature, this article develops a case study on the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) to examine how the bank enables financialisation whilst maintaining credibility with the United Kingdom’s neoliberal-nationalist regime. The findings show that the UKIB is a centralised, technocratic institution which deploys de-risking interventions to attract investment from infrastructure funds and institutional investors. De-risking acts to financialise infrastructures by enabling risk transfer to the state, boosting lending for speculative network expansion, and increasing infrastructure fund investment. To maintain credibility, the UKIB’s governance and the limited scrutiny of investments reinforce the central government’s power. This bolsters the post-Brexit agenda to revive Britain’s commercial supremacy and target investment to specific constituencies in the north of England. This agenda boosts the profitability of infrastructure assets for private investors, while exposing regions to extractive logics which undermine the potential public benefits. The findings show how public banks allow states to coordinate and bolster support for financialisation, while re-positioning financialised infrastructures to deliver on domestic policy priorities.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The UK Infrastructure Bank and the financialisation of public infrastructures amidst neoliberal-nationalism |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://journals.sagepub.com/home/cch |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Public banks, Infrastructure, Financialisation |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > STEaPP |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10172147 |
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