Allianz Global Investors has launched U.K. Infrastructure Debt Fund with £500 million ($858 million) target.
The fund, aimed at institutional investors, will invest in long-term, investment-grade, core U.K. infrastructure assets, including roads, schools, hospitals, water and energy assets.
As well as providing institutional investors with the long-term stable cash flows, they need to match their future payments needs, infrastructure debt also offers them the opportunity to invest in projects that support the United Kingdom’s economic competitiveness and quality of life.
The fund already has commitments from a number of investors, including Nippon Life, the Japanese insurer.
The United Kingdom has a national infrastructure plan, which highlights hundreds of infrastructure projects across roads, rail, airports, ports, electricity, gas, communications, water, waste and flood defenses that will require billions of pounds of investment by 2020. U.K Infrastructure Debt Fund can help finance these future projects.
Deborah Zurkow, the AllianzGI’s CIO of infrastructure debt, describes the launch as “a significant moment for infrastructure funding in the United Kingdom.”
During the past 12 months, AllianzGI has invested €2 billion ($2.7 billion) on behalf of its clients into eight infrastructure debt transactions across seven European countries, including the M8 project in Scotland.
Also, AllianzGI, on behalf of its clients, invested €433 million ($593 million) in the senior debt of the A11 project, which involves the construction of a Belgian motorway connecting the Port of Zeebrugge with the E40 and E34 roads in western Flanders. The transaction, for which Jan de Nul and DG Infra are lead sponsors, is the first listed construction-phase project bond in Belgium and uses the EIB’s Project Bond Credit Enhancement facility. The final maturity of the bond is 31.5 years.
In addition to these transactions, AllianzGI has a pipeline of investments either at the tender stage or close to completion.