We’re living through a once-in-a-generation reset. The world is increasingly volatile. Institutions are mistrusted. Alliances are shifting. Supply chains are being redrawn. And in the background, something far more permanent is taking place: the rebuilding of the physical and digital scaffolding of the global economy.

As investors, our job is to follow the money, but more importantly, to follow the cement trucks, the fibre-laying crews, the nuclear engineers, and the quietly compounding returns of long-duration assets that underpin the next chapter of global commerce. In this article, we lay out the case for global infrastructure investing as the ultimate antidote to today’s uncertainty, and highlight why we believe the companies literally rebuilding trust are where smart capital will want to be.

The Fractured Trust Economy

What happens when people stop trusting systems? They withdraw. From the media, from government, from tech platforms, from central banks. And eventually, from markets. We see signs of this everywhere: falling voter turnout, declining institutional confidence, fragmented online communities, “reshoring” of supply chains, and yes, even capital outflows from once-loved global funds.

But trust isn’t just philosophical. It’s physical.

When institutions break, people turn to what they can see and touch. In investment terms, that’s infrastructure. Whether it’s energy grids that actually deliver, ports that function despite geopolitical tension, or data centres built in stable jurisdictions to house critical information, the pendulum has swung from abstract valuations to concrete value.

The Return of Real Assets

We’ve argued before that we are entering an era where real assets will reassert their place in portfolios. Inflation fears, geopolitical de-risking, climate-driven spending, and now AI’s insatiable demand for power and connectivity are pushing capital toward infrastructure plays that offer three things: visibility, durability, and alignment.

Let’s unpack that.

• Visibility: Infrastructure projects often come with long-term contracted revenues or regulated pricing. This is music to our ears as long-duration investors.
• Durability: You can’t “disrupt” a port. You don’t just uninstall a data centre. These assets may be slow to build but are even slower to decay. They anchor portfolios.
• Alignment: Infrastructure isn’t just about returns, it’s also about economic direction. When governments commit to AI buildouts, net zero targets, and regional defence resilience, they signal where long-term capital will compound. We listen.

Concrete: Rebuilding the Physical World

Across the world, the hard-hat economy is booming. In the United States, the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act are pushing hundreds of billions into reshoring and electrification. Europe, after years of underinvestment, is scrambling to secure energy autonomy and rebuild transit. Japan has quietly restarted its nuclear ambitions. Even Australia is seeing a pipeline of transmission, hydrogen, and logistics infrastructure proposals.

Take ports. Companies like CK Hutchison (HKEX: 1), which we hold in our Global High Conviction portfolio, operate 53 ports across 24 countries. They’re a microcosm of global trade. When we see China negotiating to include COSCO in a consortium with US financial backers for the Panama Canal, it confirms our thesis: the global economy may be fracturing politically, but it’s doubling down on shared hard infrastructure.

The same applies to clean energy transmission, intermodal transport hubs, and water management. As old systems creak under population pressures and environmental stress, new investment is not just an opportunity, it’s a necessity.

Code: Infrastructure is Digital Too

Infrastructure isn’t just steel and concrete anymore. Code is infrastructure too. The digitisation of everything, payments, supply chains, health systems, communications, has made data the new oil and power the new battlefield.

This is where our recent investments in Japanese power utilities come in. Companies like Hokkaido Electric (TSE: 9509) and Kansai Electric (TSE: 9503) own dormant nuclear plants, unloved assets that are suddenly valuable again as AI’s power demand surges. The market is waking up to the fact that you can’t have AI-scale compute without AI-scale electricity, and the fastest way to meet that demand isn’t building new solar farms, it’s restarting and upgrading what already exists.

Digital infrastructure is more than semiconductors. It’s the grid, the pipes, the redundancy. And just as 19th century empires were built on railways and canals, today’s empires will be built on data centres, energy corridors, and secure cloud networks.

Cables: The New Silk Roads

Let’s not forget the glue that connects it all: subsea cables, satellites, 5G towers, and terrestrial fibre.

When Sam Altman talks about needing hundreds of new data centres globally to support artificial general intelligence, it’s not just a Silicon Valley flex, it’s a capital call to the world’s infrastructure builders. We’re watching governments, telecoms, and private equity scramble to fund new “digital trade routes” between Asia, the US, and Europe.

For Australian investors, this opens up multiple angles. Yes, we can own the data centre operators and the contractors, but we can also own the utilities that feed them. 

The Trust Dividend

There’s a reason why infrastructure has historically been considered “boring but brilliant.” It compounds quietly, throws off cash, and in times of volatility, becomes more valuable, not less.

We believe infrastructure will provide the “trust dividend” of the next decade. In a world where people trust less, they will pay more for assets that don’t move, don’t lie, and don’t default. That’s why infrastructure, particularly listed infrastructure, remains central to how we think about building wealth for the long term.

What We’re Doing

At TAMIM, we continue to tilt our global portfolios toward these enduring themes:

• Japanese power utilities with restart optionality
• Listed infrastructure giants like CK Hutchison, with flexible capital and strategic positioning
• High-conviction plays on data centre buildouts and global digital infrastructure
• Real-asset-backed businesses that benefit from geopolitical capital shifts

We are positioning not for the next quarter, but the next cycle. And this cycle, we believe, will be built, literally and metaphorically, on infrastructure that restores trust in the systems that move the world.

TAMIM Takeaway

Markets move fast. But infrastructure moves slow, and sometimes, that’s exactly the point. In a world craving certainty, physical and digital infrastructure provide durability, resilience, and cash flow visibility. That’s where we’re looking. Because when others chase momentum, we chase foundations.

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Disclaimer: CK Hutchison (HKEX: 1), Hokkaido Electric (TSE: 9509) and Kansai Electric (TSE: 9503) are held in TAMIM Portfolios as at date of article publication. Holdings can change substantially at any given time.