Historically, the infrastructure asset class has only been accessible to the private sector — large institutional investors, such as pension funds or life insurance companies, looking for long-term stability, who had the necessary upfront resources. Since the early 2000s, however, publicly-traded listed companies have emerged on the investment landscape, creating new ways to deploy funds.

As Jeremy Anagnos at CBRE Clarion explains, “There are different ways to own an infrastructure asset, and different ways for investors to access it. A large pension fund, for example, has enough capital to go directly to the asset, but that’s challenging for most investors and there’s a scarcity of assets available. So what you’re seeing now is smaller institutional investors buying listed companies to gain an allocation to infrastructure assets — Frankfurt Airport, for example, is owned by German listed company Fraport,” Anagnos continues. “Our focus is to manage a portfolio