StepStone Infrastructure and Real Assets (SIRA), a global infrastructure and real assets advisory and asset management team within StepStone, has made a number of new senior appointments globally, bringing the investment team to almost 30 professionals.
Todd Lapenna, formerly at CalPERS in the US, has joined as a partner, based in New York. Varun Kapoor, formerly at Hastings Funds Management in the US and Australia, has joined as the head of investment operations, based in Sydney, and Sid Chandrasekaran, formerly at GIC in Singapore, has joined as an investment manager based in London.
James O’Leary, partner and head of SIRA, says: “Our business supports the needs of our investors across all stages of their investment programs in a highly customised way. We are committed to having a world-class investment team with broad-based experience and skills, and our new hires will further enhance our global capabilities. In addition to increasing SIRA’s size and depth, we are also making a significant expansion to our US operations by establishing a team based in New York to support our North American activities for the benefit of our investors in the US and globally.”
Lapenna has specialised in infrastructure investments in a career spanning more than 15 years. Prior to joining StepStone, he was a portfolio manager at CalPERS for seven years. At CalPERS, he developed and implemented CalPERS’ infrastructure investment strategy across a USUSD3.5 billion portfolio. Prior to CalPERS, he held principal investment and capital market roles with RBS, CIT, EDC and Westcoast Energy, a major North American utility company.
Lapenna says: “I'm excited about joining a very high quality team at StepStone. I look forward to the opportunity to bring my skills and experience to support investors seeking customised infrastructure and real assets investment and asset management solutions. My work developing the infrastructure portfolio at CalPERS virtually from inception has provided powerful insights into the challenges and opportunities of the asset class, which will be valuable to other investors in the US and around the world. Increasingly, investors require more bespoke solutions to meet their objectives – and StepStone has the people, systems and culture to successfully deliver excellent results.”
O’Leary says: “Todd, Varun and Sid will provide our team with added depth and experience, particularly in the US. Given their time working at and for LPs, they bring an important understanding of the specific challenges and opportunities our clients face in implementing infrastructure investment strategies.”
These additions complement SIRA’s other recent senior hires, including Simon Beer as partner and head of asset management, previously at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and Enrique Fuentes as a senior adviser in Europe, previously at Ferrovial.
