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Advisory hub

Finance and economics

Our team helps you to develop effective strategies to navigate emerging trends and new economic realities.

Tim Treharne

Tim Treharne

Americas Advisory Services Leader

Our team helps you to develop effective strategies to navigate emerging trends and new economic realities.

In an era of rapid economic change, it’s vital to work with an advisory partner that recognises opportunities and understands how to realise long-term value. Our finance and economics team provides technical and commercial advisory services backed by rigorous economic insights. We help policymakers to make sound decisions, enabling businesses to invest or divest, pivot and grow.

We work with clients to develop business cases, robust strategies and economic policies, to make sound procurement decisions and investments, carry out technical due diligence and financial advisory, while remaining on top of the technical, economic and operational issues. Our teams are focused on sustainable investment decisions and policies – helping you to invest in new assets, upgrade existing portfolios, and focus on environmental, social and governance issues.

How we help you

Economic advisory

We offer a comprehensive economic consultancy service to clients across the built environment, energy, infrastructure and transport sectors. We support companies, investors, regulators, and governments on a wide range of issues, including strategy and market design. We work with our clients at moments of change, whether it’s the development of policy, assessing the impact of major investments, informing strategic choices, restructuring a business, or increasing operational efficiency.

Our team acts as a partner to your business, applying a range of quantitative techniques, carrying out research and workshops, finding new opportunities to improve activity and exploring new business models within existing and novel arrangements.

Our advice combines a deep understanding of economic theory with detailed knowledge of relevant policy, regulation and markets, financial insight and deep technical experience. We frequently help clients with feasibility studies, vital before any major public development or project, leading to a robust financial model and sound business case. And with the increasing uncertainties driven by climate change and its associated regulation, we offer advice on the future shape of the infrastructure market.

Featured project

Evaluating the future of energy

We have provided economic forecasting advice to National Grid, looking at future electricity and gas demand from the UK’s industrial and commercial sectors. We developed a new UK energy economic model and scenario tool to study the impact of different macro-economic factors (new technologies and various regulation and policy implications) on demand for electricity and gas. The tool was then applied to reveal impacts on 24 sectors of the UK economy, up to 2050.

Financial advisory

Investing in infrastructure, from fast-growing new mobility systems to tomorrow’s renewable power grids, requires a mergers and acquisitions partner that knows the sector inside and out. Arup is a lead technical advisor on major transactions, bringing our wealth of technical expertise and analytical rigour to every element of the process.

Our experience as the designers, engineers and technical consultants behind some of the world’s highest performance infrastructure, our advisory team knows how to structure deals that optimise returns and minimise risk, whether a merger, acquisition or other investment.

Every year, we help clients complete transactions worth tens of billions of dollars, working as a flexible global team that works in harmony with many different organisations’ structure and priorities. We understand the interplay of technical performance, economic ambitions and the ever-changing regulatory environment. And as the world accelerates its shift to a post-fossil fuel economy, Arup is at the forefront of the investment transition we all want to see.

Featured project

Investing in tomorrow’s transport

We helped Infracapital become majority shareholder in rapidly growing battery storage and electric bus start-up, Zenobe Energy. Our team was able to provide both commercial and technical due diligence to establish the long-term potential of this three-year old company, assessing its pre-sale valuation, and helping Infracapital grow its stake in decarbonised assets and investments.

Deal advisory and due diligence

Our clients invest in infrastructure or other built environment assets with confidence, knowing we bring unparalleled rigour to every transaction. As a leading global advisor, our dedicated team are experts in the assessment of deals, able to forensically probe the technical, commercial and regulatory context of a proposed investment.

Our insights identify risks, reveal opportunities and provide valuable advice about how an asset might be improved, driving better returns tomorrow – physically, operationally or both.

As the largest technical due diligence team in the sector, we build long-term relationships with major investors, banks and pension funds. Our team combines technical and commercial specialists, keen market watchers who take time to understand how a transaction can provide the returns your organisation depends on. Whichever industry you’re investing in, we have the technical expertise to analyse and profile your asset’s true potential.

Featured project

Gauging value

In Mexico, we were technical due diligence advisor for an acquisition of a large stake in IDEAL, one of Mexico’s largest infrastructure development companies (operating toll roads, logistics and wastewater terminals). We helped our client to confirm that the purchase represented a sound choice by examining IDEAL’s future performance, environmental and health and safety practices.

PPP advisory

Public-private partnerships (P3) are an effective way of procuring public service infrastructure. Today, P3 contracts offer greater certainty on cost and scheduled outcomes as well as long term commitment to maintenance. Risks are better understood by all parties, and our approach introduces more rigour and pragmatism to the bidding process – vital for projects supported by public sector budgets.

We work as a full advisory partner on P3 projects, starting with workshops to identify organisations’ long-term goals, ranking them by priority, listening to those who will benefit from the project. We then develop the tender strategy for clients, with a service that brings together all the financial, legal, technical and insurance elements of the project.

We believe P3 contracts also offer a way to identify wider opportunities for achieving socially valuable outcomes to a project or programme – ensuring stronger public support and wider community benefits.

Using a P3 process in San Francisco

Using a P3 process for San Francisco's Protero Bus Yard

In using an innovative P3 process to shape San Francisco’s Potrero Bus Yard scheme – we were able to deliver a new emissions-free bus maintenance depot alongside much needed social housing.

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A PPP model for programme and funding in Uzbekistan

A PPP model for programme and funding in Uzbekistan

In Uzbekistan we’ve used a PPP model to help structure programme and funding for the vital Tashkent to Andijan Expressway, improving connectivity for up to ten million people. This PPP was the first in Uzbekistan, making it a milestone and a catalyst for future work coming to market.

Find out more about our work

Sustainable investments

The environmental, sustainability and corporate governance (ESG) agenda, and the regulations that drive it, are forces that are fundamentally reshaping how industries operate, changing the investor equation. Customer and client preferences and behaviours are evolving rapidly, and the scale of impact from climate change is triggering a global revolution in investor priorities. As a purpose-led organisation with a commitment to sustainable development, Arup is helping organisations to navigate this changing landscape with confidence.

Find out more about sustainable investments


Discover how our team can help

You can access our Advisory Services through regional consultants around the world. Wherever you’re based, we can help you look beyond your sector to explore new sources of inspiration and identify opportunities for growth.

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