Asterion Industrial Partners announced that it has exceeded its fundraising target in less than one year since the launch of its first Fund, Asterion Industrial Infra Fund I, FCR. The Fund, with a target size of EUR 850 million (US$ 940.60 million), was registered with the CNMV (Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores – Spain’s market regulator) on November 16, 2018, and reached EUR 901million (US$ 997.03 million) in commitments on October 31, 2019. The Fund will remain open for a select number of investors who are currently in the process of completing additional subscriptions. These plan to be finalized before year-end, when the Fund will be fully closed to further commitments.

Asterion Industrial Infra Fund I is one of the largest first-time infrastructure funds ever raised in Europe and also one of the quickest. Investors in the Fund include pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, insurance companies and endowments from across Europe, North America, Middle East, and Asia.

In addition to the EUR 901million (US$ 997.03 million) of Fund commitments raised to date, the team has generated EUR 400 million (US$ 442.63 million) of co-investment for its investors in two of the three transactions closed in the Fund so far. Including capital in the Fund and through its co-investments, Asterion manages in excess of EUR 1.3 billion (US$ 1438.56 million).

Asterion has completed three investments fully in line with its 3-pronged investment strategy centered on a focused geographical, sector and mid-market size approach, a strict definition of infrastructure risk, and finally using its industrial approach and active asset management for critical value creation.

The first investment completed by the Fund was Proxiserve, a French company in the energy services space in which Asterion invested in a partnership with Mirova, the French infrastructure fund, in March 2019.

Its second investment in Asterion Energies constitutes a renewables platform that is being built up to participate in the ongoing energy transition in Europe today. The platform will be diversified in terms of technologies, geographies and development stages. Asterion has already made initial investments to fund projects in Spain through Iberia Solar and Four Winds, and in France through Prejeance Industrial.

The third investment in the Asterion Industrial Infra Fund I portfolio is a data centres platform, carved out from Spanish telecom incumbent, Telefonica. The acquisition of this platform of 11 data centres with 29MW of power in Spain and Latam, which has now been rebranded as Nabiax, was closed in July 2019.