With two months to go before 2012 ends, the EU-focused Marguerite Fund is still shy of more than half the funds needed to reach its stated €1.5bn final close target. Most of the fund’s current sponsors are state-backed financial institutions.
Macquarie’s Everbright China vehicle, which by June last year had secured $729m in commitments, has made its first two investments in Chinese companies – one an environmental waste specialist and the other a water supply project.
The Toronto-based fund manager, which invests on behalf of Canadian institutions, has acquired the Raging River hydro-electric power facility on North Vancouver Island. The purchase brings Aquila’s hydropower generating capacity to 20MW.
Deutsche Bank's year-long, aborted sale of RREEF took its toll on the asset manager's second infrastructure fund. The fund is now going back to the drawing board, to be relaunched in 2013. It will, however, get to keep the €620m it reached a first close on.
Quay Partners, the Australian private equity adviser and funds of funds manager, has launched a new four-strong infrastructure advisory group including Matthew McPhee and Nancy Mangraviti. They were part of a planned infrastructure fund of funds at RBC which failed to materialise.
With 2012 coming to an end, it is looking likely that it will be remembered as the year the infrastructure debt market truly took off.
The French private equity firm is targeting a final close next February on between €1.2bn and €1.3bn and has already invested at least €500m of the capital raised
A second Ferrovial and Sacyr-managed concession - the AP36 Ocana-La Roda - has gone bust, following last month's bankruptcy of Madrid's R4 ring road. It is the third Spanish road to start Chapter 11 proceedings.
The UK’s second-largest pension has lent £100m of 25-year inflation-linked debt to utility South East Water - its first ever infrastructure debt investment.
The UK alternative asset manager has bought the equity and loan note interests in Northern Ireland’s Drumglass high school PFI. The money has come from Foresight’s £33m Infrastructure VCT Shares, the largest VCT fundraising in 2011/12.
The French fund manager has reached a first close for the InfraVia European Fund II, raising almost half of the €400m total it hopes to get. The fund will target mid-market deals in the transportation, energy, social infrastructure, utilities and communications sectors.
The BAE Systems Pension Funds, BT Pension Scheme, Pension Protection Fund, The Railways Pension Scheme, Strathclyde Pension Fund and West Midlands Pension Fund are the founding members of the £2bn Pensions Infrastructure Platform. Together, the schemes manage some £88bn.
The French bank has teamed up with Ageas to help the insurance company build a €2bn infrastructure debt portfolio over the next two to three years.
Adebayo Ogunlesi, chairman and managing partner of Global Infrastructure Partners and former Credit Suisse executive, has joined eight other independents on Goldman Sachs’ board of directors. GIP closed the world’s largest-ever infrastructure fund on $8.25bn earlier this month.
The UK business lobby is calling for the establishment of a roads regulator that would apply the regulated asset base model used in the utilities sector to the UK’s roads network. The CBI also calls for a portion of motorist taxes to be converted to user charges as a prelude to the introduction of tolling.