Antin targets up to €6bn for fourth vehicle

Antin Infrastructure Partners is looking to raise between €5 billion and €6 billion for its fourth fund, Infrastructure Investor understands.

The French manager has begun bringing Antin Infrastructure Partners IV to investors, seeking commitments two years after it closed its third fund on €3.6 billion. Antin’s Fund III had an initial €3 billion target, sealing a first and final close in December 2016, four months after launching the vehicle. It comprised 85 LPs from Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.

Antin is set to continue the strategy pursued by its previous funds, seeking investments in transport, telecoms, social infrastructure and energy assets on a 15 percent gross IRR basis. The firm made its first non-European investment earlier this year with the acquisition of FirstLight Fiber in the US and will continue to opportunistically make investments outside the continent.

The FirstLight Fiber deal was one of five agreed by the fund this year, in addition to a bid for UK broadband group CityFibre, Spanish fibre network Ufinet Spain, French district heating firm Idex, as well as a move for Norway-based salmon transportation company Sølvtrans in September.

Antin’s second fund is understood to be generating a gross IRR of 15.6 percent. The group’s first fund has one remaining investment unrealised in Euroports, which is held alongside Brookfield and Arcus.

Antin was awarded €112 million in compensation earlier this year by the Washington DC-based International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in a claim against the Spanish government for damages relating to solar investments it made from Fund I in 2011. A petition to enforce the award remains in process in a DC district court.

Antin declined to comment on the fundraising or legal processes.