Ministers will announce this month that the private finance taskforce is to be privatised.
It will become a merchant bank called UK Capital, advising on the construction of private finance deals in an attempt to encourage parts of the public sector, which are short of cash, to refinance assets with private sector money. The bank will cover preparations for deals such a local authority school refurbishments or prison developments, for example.
PFI in the UK has become the model for the rest of Europe where there is growing interest in the transfer of risk from public to private sector, reports the Financial Times
Financial Times 05/07/99 page 1, page 29
