The average time for infrastructure private equity funds to be on offer from start to finish began falling in 2012, reaching a low of 15.6 months in 2015. That year, the trimmed mean, which drops the top and bottom 5 percent, was even lower at 14.1 months, with the median coming in at a remarkable 12.0 months. 2016 saw this trend reverse, and we began wondering if we were seeing the beginning of a new trend, where closing times were increasing. 2017 data does nothing to dispel that concern, as marketing times do, indeed, seem to be creeping up.

Infrastructure funds reaching a final close in 2017 had been fundraising for an average of 17.5 months. (One European-focused fund that took 103 months to reach its goal was dropped from the analysis because it was such an outlier.) That absolute average falls to 17.3 months when using a trimmed mean, while the median falls a bit further to 16.0 months. Funds closing in 2017 took longer to close than any year since 2012, when it took a