Antin beats target with €1.1bn fundraise

Antin Infrastructure Partners, which is sponsored by French bank BNP Paribas, reached final closing last week on its debut fund. The final amount of €1.1 billion surpassed the fund’s €1 billion target and included a €300 million commitment from BNP Paribas.  

“The fundraising was initiated at the beginning of 2009 in an extremely difficult market,” said Antin chief executive officer and managing partner Alain Rauscher in a statement. “We were, however, able to attract some high quality investors early on, which paved the road for the success of our placement.”

According to the same statement, the fund – which had announded a third closing on €700 million in May – included commitments from 35 investors from Scandinavia, France, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, Canada and Australia.

The ten-year, closed-end fund will target brownfield, non-listed assets in the Eurozone and is aiming for a target yield of 5 percent and internal rate of return of 15 percent.

Antin has already made four investments from the fund worth a total of €240 million: Luxembourg-based Euroports, which manages a portfolio of European concession port companies; Porterbrook, the UK train rolling stock leasing company; Pisto, a French independent oil storage company; and Bina Istra, a Croatian company which has a concession agreement to manage the Istrian Y highway complex.

The Antin fundraising closely mirrored that of fellow Paris-based fund manager Cube Infrastructure, which in July this year closed its debut fund on €1.08 billion – also beating a €1 billion target.