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Zak Bentley

Zak Bentley is a senior reporter at Infrastructure Investor based in London. Zak joined Infrastructure Investor in 2016 from Centaur where he was a reporter at their Clean Energy Pipeline title. He has a detailed knowledge and experience of the financial and regulatory aspects of the global renewable energy market, as well as the wider infrastructure market. Zak has a degree in English and History from the University of Birmingham.
The pair, alongside Transmission Investment, fought off competition from Macquarie, HICL, Equitix and Balfour Beatty.
The deal is the scheme’s largest to date and was sealed by the Multi-Strategy Infrastructure Fund, which now has £750m of commitments.
The deal is the €1.8bn fund’s fourth investment, all of which have been in the transport sector.
The manager’s maiden fund returned 2.1x capital and generated an 11.4% IRR on exit. Co-founders Ed Clarke and Martin Lennon talk us through the process and describe what’s changed in the market since its launch.
The firm’s strategy is aiming to provide an IRR of between 16% and 20% from investments in up to 15 projects.
The deal is expected to see storage provider BESS grow a portfolio of over 60MW by the end of the year. The investment is Tiger Infrastructure’s first venture into the UK market and its maiden storage commitment since its formation in 2009 by Julian Robertson and Emil Henry, former assistant secretary of the US Treasury.
Current commitments stand at around €110m after a second close in the summer – this followed a €66 million first close at the end of March. The Swiss vehicle has also secured its second investment, deploying C$120m into energy storage sites in Canada.
The fund’s £1bn predecessor is exhibiting a 20.6% return in the three years since it closed, reveals the insurer.
The two firms are planning a second offering following the sale to ERG. The new venture will be partly financed through recycling some of the sale capital, but will also tap the market for fundraising proceeds in excess of €100m.
More than 70 percent of the deals made by the firm’s $4bn fund III have now been invested in the telecoms and broadband sector.
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