At an extraordinary meeting held in Brisbane yesterday, Prime Infrastructure security holders voted overwhelmingly for the conversion and rebadging of Prime into Babcock & Brown Infrastructure, an ASX-listed infrastructure fund.

B&B Investor Services is the responsible entity for Prime Infrastructure Trust (PIT) which, together with Prime Infrastructure Management Ltd (PIML), comprises Prime Infrastructure.

Prime Infrastructure now becomes Babcock & Brown Infrastructure, PIT becomes Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Trust, and PIML becomes Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Ltd.

Chairman David Hamill said Prime’s independent directors believed the advantages of the restructuring outweighed the drawbacks. An independent report by PKF Corporate Advisers Pty had concluded the restructure was fair and reasonable to the non-associated security holders.

PIML senior management would be offered employment with B&B and seconded to Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Management Pty. Existing and future operational and support staff would remain directly employed by PIML or its subsidiaries.

It was proposed the four BBIL directors be Babcock & Brown representatives, chairman Phillip Green and Peter Hofbauer, and independent directors David Hamill and Barry Upson, former chairman of New Plymouth-headquartered energy network company Powerco that PIML acquired late last year.

Hamill said the independent directors believed the restructure should not result in any change to the operations of Prime Infrastructure's assets, nor increase the management and performance fees otherwise currently payable to Babcock & Brown.

Prime Infrastructure would continue its strategy of asset and income stream diversification across geographical locations and asset classes with the intention of continuing to deliver sustainable, high-quality cash flows, he said.