Hermes Fund Managers yesterday announced that it has held an interim close for the Hermes GPE Infrastructure Fund and its related accounts (together,HIF), raising an additional £210 million ($357 million; €262.5 million) from several clients including the Santander (UK) Common Investment Fund.

HIF has now raised over £700 million ($1.2 billion; €875 million) including allocations from several UK local government pension schemes, bringing Hermes Infrastructure's assets under management to £2.7 billion ($4.6 billion; €3.4 billion), including a £2 billion ($3.4 billion; €2.5 billion) direct investment managed account programme for the BT Pension Scheme.

HIF offers local government pension schemes clients the opportunity to reduce costs by being treated as a single client for fee purposes.  

Peter Hofbauer, Head of Hermes Infrastructure, said: 

"We are pleased to welcome our latest investors on board. We remain focussed and committed to delivering enhanced risk-adjusted returns for investors through our range of investment strategies and diversified infrastructure portfolio.  Paying the right price, aiming to preserve capital and integrating ESG considerations into our investments are essential to our approach and optimising returns."  

Antony Barker, Director of Pensions at Santander UK plc, said:

"Investing in infrastructure assets is an important component of our asset allocation strategy, reflecting the natural hedge for liabilities and the chance to utilise our illiquidity for best reward.  Partnering with Hermes Infrastructure is our first such dedicated infrastructure commitment for the Santander CIF, with Hermes selected because its strategies offered us the opportunity to tailor a direct and indirect portfolio that satisfied our risk and return requirements and, more importantly, an accelerated deployment of cash into new and secondary investments at attractive pricing."

Hermes Infrastructure currently manages a portfolio of eleven assets valued at c£1.2 billion ($2 billion; €1.5 billion), which are predominantly direct investments in UK Core and Value Added strategies.