Macquarie raises 579 million pounds for UK infra debt fund
Macquarie Group has announced the first close of its Macquarie Infrastructure Debt fund (UK Inflation Linked).The fund has raised a total £579 million (US$909 million). This fund provides a vehicle for pension schemes of all sizes to access the asset class, with investments sourced and managed by the world's largest infrastructure investor.
According to Macquarie, the fund and other managed accounts had raised total of £979 million (US$1536 million) from a total of eleven major institutional investors.
The fund has a target value of £1.25 billion, which is expected to be reached in a second close.
By investing in less liquid assets and adopting a buy and hold strategy, the fund aims to achieve returns in excess of traditional liability matching strategies, supporting pension schemes to reduce their funding deficits. The fund will focus exclusively in investment grade debt to provide predictable asset cash flows suitable for pension scheme liability matching.
The fund was launched on 17 March 2014. At that time, James Wilson, CEO of Macquarie Infrastructure Debt Investment Solutions, said:
Infrastructure borrowers and pension schemes are natural partners which have been traditionally intermediated by banks through inflation swaps. However, since the financial crisis, borrowers have incurred significantly increased costs and risks when managing their inflation exposures using inflation swaps. Similarly, pension schemes suffer from considerable opportunity cost when they use large allocations to gilts or swaps to manage their interest rate and inflation exposures.
Our fund is designed to bring these natural counterparties together, in a more direct and efficient way. This will deliver significant benefits to all parties including to the wider UK economy as well.
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