ASIC targets infrastructure fundraising: back to the future?

ASIC has issued draft guidelines for a content checklist for infrastructure fund prospectuses.

Checklists for fundraising documents were abandoned in 1991, because they encouraged prospectuses that "ticked the boxes", rather than addressing the needs of investors.

Now ASIC thinks that checklists are a good idea when fundraising for infrastructure investment. Its reasoning is that:

• there is about to be an upsurge in infrastructure projects; and
• as an investment choice, infrastructure is too complex for retail investors to understand under current prospectus and PDS rules.

ASIC wants to issue a set of guidelines that would set out:

• benchmarks against which infrastructure fundraising documents would report, on an "if not, why not" basis; and