Alternative investment specialist, Aquila Capital, has secured further capital commitments for its infrastructure fund, ACIF. The fund’s volume now exceeds EUR200 million. The defensive fund, with a focus on Core and Core+ investments in OECD countries, achieved a further net growth of 9.5 per cent for the full year 2019. Since the fund’s launch, the ACIF has posted positive performance in each quarter, thereby avoiding the so-called ‘J-curve’.
The performance of the fund is mainly driven by positive financial contributions through direct and co-investments, appreciations as well as dividends from the target funds. The portfolio currently consists of more than 180 individual investments in the transport and traffic, utilities, energy, telecommunications, and social infrastructure sectors in 17 countries.
Christian Brezina, head of diversified infrastructure and multi asset investments at Aquila Capital, says: “The ACIF combines fund investments and direct co-investments in renewable energies from the Aquila group’s proprietary transaction pipeline. This allows us to bring together two diverse skillsets and networks from which our investors profit as well.
“Unlike other funds in the market, the ACIF has an evergreen structure, which allows the long-term nature of the infrastructure asset class to be optimally taken into account. Our fund is therefore ideally positioned to participate in the increasingly attractive returns on high-quality assets in the wake of the current market situation.”
Roman Rosslenbroich, co-founder and CEO of Aquila Capital, emphasises: “As one of the leading investors in real assets, it is our goal to actively shape the European energy transition. Infrastructure is a particularly interesting asset class as the renewal of infrastructure will lead to multi-billion investment opportunities over the coming decades and the asset class has attractive return expectations. This makes infrastructure investments extremely interesting for our investors.”
The ACIF was launched in 2017 to offer professional and semi-professional investors the opportunity to benefit from the opportunities of the infrastructure asset class with a comparatively low minimum subscription combined with a high degree of risk diversification. The fund focuses on sustainable long-term performance and aims at achieving ongoing payments of 4 per cent to 5 per cent per annum.
The mandate focuses on Europe which accounts for 85 per cent of net asset value. Further regional diversification over additional key markets with a focus on North America is expected in the coming quarters. The fund has a broad German and international investor base ranging from credit institutions, insurance companies and pension funds to pension schemes and foundations. The fund comprises two separate fund vehicles in Germany and Luxembourg.
