A golden rule of issues management is to try to use what on the surface appears to be a negative position to promote a positive outcome.
Media interest in a controversy can become a platform to strengthen an organisations position.
Since late last year, Jackson Wells has been working with independent investment management firm CP2, raising its media profile both in Australia and overseas.
While the world comes to grips with the global financial crisis, CP2 and its CEO, Peter Doherty, see many opportunities to invest money in infrastructure on behalf of large sovereign pension funds and endowments spanning North America, Europe and Australasia.
Given the poor and at times controversial performance of infrastructure projects such as Sydneys Cross City Tunnel and the company building Brisbanes Airport Link BrisConnections it seems counter-intuitive to be spruiking infrastructure investment.
Not to Doherty, who sees a perfect fit between infrastructure and what he terms patient capital .
Infrastructure, such as toll roads, airports and utilities, can deliver reliable long-term returns, Doherty says.
This matches the low-risk profile of CP2s clients, including the Harvard Management Company, Britains Universities Superannuation Scheme and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund.
CP2s approach is in contrast with the investment bank model dominated by high transaction fees and inflated traffic-flow projections, which has underpinned many infrastructure projects in recent years.
Doherty is critical of the short-term, deal-orientated nature the investment bankers brought to the space. CP2 defines short-term as eight years at a minimum.
If you want to get rich quick, dont invest in infrastructure, Doherty says.
He predicts the investment bankers will leave infrastructure as CP2 capitalises on the market turbulence thrown up by the global financial crisis and invests in more realistically priced assets.
Doherty and CP2s unique approach, honed over the 12 years since the company was founded to provide investment advice to pension and mutual funds, has piqued the interest of many journalists.
Doherty says a good piece of infrastructure stimulates the economy and lifts peoples living standards.
We believe strongly in lifting the living standards and well-being of those people we touch, he says.
It is CP2s point of difference in an industry reeling under the weight of the global economic slowdown that has attracted the media.
Jackson Wells has secured CP2 coverage in The Australian Financial Review, The Australian, the Herald Sun, the US-based Global Money Management, Business Spectator, Eureka Report, Infrastructure Journal Online and Investor Daily.
To date, CP2 has provided infrastructure and equity investment research to more than 50 institutional investors. This research is based on an analysis of more than 100 assets globally and infrastructure investment cycles spanning 200 years.
In 2001, it developed the infrastructure investment strategy for a Canadian pension fund that is now the world's largest institutional investor in the infrastructure sector.
CP2 was one of the first investment managers to encourage institutional investors to invest in the infrastructure sector.
The firm transitioned from advisor to investment manager in 2005 with the award of an infrastructure mandate from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, a key pension fund of the New Zealand Government.
Today, CP2 manages approximately A$2.6 billion in investments in the infrastructure sector in both listed and unlisted markets, with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, London and New York City.
The company is the largest shareholder in ConnectEast, which owns and operates the EastLink toll road in Melbourne and Transurban, which fully or partly owns Melbournes CityLink toll road and Sydneys M2, Eastern Distributor, M4, M5 and M7 toll roads.
Transurban is also an investor in the DRIVe Capital Beltway Project, in WashingtonDC.
Beyond toll roads, CP2 has a 50 per cent stake in Sydneys Airport rail link and shareholdings in Zurich and CopenhagenAirports and the UKs United Utilities.
CP2 also offers an absolute return equities fund - the Endeavour Fund designed for institutions and high net-worth individuals in Australia.