possibly a target of unlisted funds

there was a great article in todays AFR about infrastructure.

it basically said that big fund managers were looking for listed infrastructure assets to takeover and put into unlisted wholesale funds because the prices were now attractive.

CEU is a target, make no mistake. for get Transurban, after they got their fingers burnt in the US they dont have the cash to takeout CEU.

No, it will be players like the Canadian teachers pension fund or an unlisted infrastructure fund from Macquarie, BNB, UBS, Goldman etc. These guys are building up a war chest to get hold of key quality assets. can you tell me a better time to have a go at CEU? you have all these hedge funds shorting these stocks because of market related issues rather than fundamental issues. the fundamentals of CEU are strong but how can the stock not go down when the stock standard trade of hedge funds is now short property, banks and infrastructure and long resources?

When you see the USD turn the hedge funds will dump futures contracts for Gold, Oil and all the other tradeable soft and hard commodities. What will they do? They will the buy the defensive sectors of property, banks and infrastructure because that will be where the value is.

I still think the bulk commodities like iron ore will be attractive to hedge funds but the real corporate activity will be in the propery, banking and infrastructure space.

CEU has to be on the radar of these players because it is just a sigle asset, nice and boring. Australian infrastructure assets have been hit quite hard, harder than o/s assets i am sure.

I still dont know why the market has sold down CEU, its revenue is linked to CPI and its debt is hedged until 2010. So there should be no reason to sell it down. These are surely the times where you buy quality and shut your eyes because when the markets turn (and they will) quality assets like CEU will be the place to be.