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Comment by whycome | Hacker News Reader

Nah. Morgan Stanley. Diversification. They're the ones that bought all the Chicago parking meters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Parking_Meters

for those not in the know. Chicago basically sold all revenue from their parking meters to Saudi Arabia for the next 75 years. Not basically, that is exactly what happened.

"Chicago basically sold all revenue from their parking meters to Saudi Arabia for the next 75 years."

According to your wiki link, only 25% are owned by a Saudi Arabian company. The rest is mostly US.

Or is Morgan Stanley owned by Saudi Arabia now?

TL;DR: it's complicated[0]. Also, you're right - I'm mistakenly conflating SA with the UAE.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/164hefi/comment/jy...

Similarly the Canadian province of Ontario leased it's only toll highway for 99 years to an international group, for an amount it currently earns in tolls every ~2 years. Fun.

You're missing the bigger picture though. By doing so they managed to look like they had balanced the budget in an election year. That's what really matters here.

Earns, or receives in revenue?

‘Earns’ implies net profit after all expenses (including operations and maintenance), which I find hard to believe in this specific case.

Fair. At the current rate, the revenue takes two years to cover the original cost. The net profit takes 6. The margins are quite good due to consistent price increases.

Abu Dhabi isn’t in Saudi Arabia.

The UAE is a completely different country than Saudi Arabia, the article doesn't mention Saudi Arabia at all, it claims that the sovereign wealth fund of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the UAE indirectly owns ~25% of the company that bought the parking revenue, and the article's total of direct ownership claims adds up to 123.408%, which is somewhat improbable and calls into question the other ownership claims.

Interesting - paid $1.15B and currently up $0.5B with 60 years to go, so the meters are generating $1.65B per 15 years, which'll be $8.25B (assuming no price increases) over the 75 years.

If you do the math, going from $1.15B to $8.25B in 75 years is only a 2.66% annual rate of return.

I wonder if the Saudi's saw this as a good investment, or a good PR deal ?

Why assume no price increases? Also, parking meters in a car centric region seem like they would be closer to government bonds than equities in terms of risk profile, so the return would need to be compared to something like that.

I just meant the math assumes no price increases. I'd have to guess that there are some agreed-upon price increases in the deal (2.66% too unattractive), and I see there was a recent failed lawsuit by Chicago drivers protesting high prices (downtown $7/hr), so they probably have gone up.

I vaguely recall reading about clauses granting lost parking spot profit for e.g. streets being closed for parades or construction that were pretty heavy handed as well. I wonder how true those were.

I don’t live there any more and that still makes my blood boil. I especially loved the politicians who voted in favor and claimed they did not have time to read the legislation. “I’m not corrupt, just incompetent”

Ideally it would be a private equity, so they would be immune from reporting obligations.

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