Mr. Andrew McDowell:

We do take equity stakes in infrastructure projects, but only indirectly through funds. I now understand the nature of the Deputy's question. He is asking if we would actually take equity ownership of a project as opposed to just providing the debt financing. The answer is "Not directly". We will not take equity ownership of an infrastructure project, jointly with a state, directly.

What we do extensively is provide very large amounts of equity funding to private infrastructure funds in Europe. They in turn take ownership stakes in things like PPP projects and other infrastructure projects, jointly with the government. We do not do it directly because we would then face a conflict of interest in terms of our management of an equity stake in a project and our debt financing to it. One cannot be on both sides of the table at the same time. One cannot be the equity holder negotiating the debt finance when one is both the equity holder and the debt financier. There are too many conflicts of interest. We do not do that.