In a little over a year after it announced the close of its debut infrastructure vehicle, Asterion Industrial Partners is back on the fundraising trail with Asterion Industrial Infra Fund II, targeting €1.3 billion with a €1.5 billion hard-cap, Infrastructure Investor understands.
Fund II will pursue an identical industrial value-creation strategy to its €1.1 billion predecessor, focusing on European mid-market infrastructure across telecoms, energy and utilities, and mobility sectors. The 10-year vehicle is earmarking a first close for summer.
Fund I also has a 10-year lifespan with two possible extensions, and aims to generate gross returns of 12-14 percent, plus an average 5 percent yield. It is around 80 percent invested – with the remaining capital earmarked for investments tied to or originating from its existing portfolio – including some €650 million of co-investments. That brings Asterion’s total assets under management to circa €1.7 billion.
The Madrid-based firm, which also has a presence in London and Paris, recently announced the sale of an 854MW solar portfolio in Spain to Lightsource bp. The portfolio will be developed to ‘ready-to-build’ stage by Asterion and Lightsource bp, with the latter then leading the projects to financial close and construction in 2022. It formed part of renewables platform company Asterion Energies, founded in 2019 and developing more than 4.5GW of solar and wind projects across Spain, France and Italy.
While the fund manager has not been active for long, chief executive Jesús Olmos said in a statement he is “excited about the ability to rotate certain assets to allow the company to continue financing its development and construction activities”.
The 24-strong Asterion has a team with a strong industrial background. Senior director Sebastián Urbán-Muñoz recently told us he thinks “infrastructure investment will become increasingly complex”, meaning industry knowledge is a “must” alongside industry experience.
“It’s very difficult to have a vision and a business strategy without having a deep industry knowledge of the main technology drivers of the business,” he said, using digital infrastructure as an example. “It’s one thing to have a view on long-term technology trends and user demand trends and another to operate businesses to create value,” he added.
Asterion was launched in September 2018 by Olmos and a group of former KKR partners, including co-founders Winnie Wutte and Guido Mitrani.
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