Cube Infra closes oversubscribed by €80m

Paris-based European infrastructure fund manager Cube Infrastructure has reached final close on its debut fund at €1.08 billion, raising €80 million more than its intended target size of €1 billion, a source confirmed to Infrastructureinvestor.com.

Cube: closes oversubscribed by €80m

The fund now counts at least 14 shareholders – including pension funds, insurance companies, banks and funds of funds. Just under half of Cube’s investors come from the US – including MainePERS, the Maine Public Employees Retirement System – with some 33 percent coming from France.
 
Swiss-based asset manager Partners Group is another of Cube’s limited partners (LPs)while French bank Natixis provided the fund with a seed investment of €250 million. Natixis is the corporate and investment banking arm of French banking group BCPE. Other LPs come from Canada, Denmark, Germany and Portugal.

Cube Infrastructure reached its first close at the end of 2007 with €390 million. In May, it held its fourth close surpassing €700 million, announcing that it was on schedule to reach its final close of €1 billion by the end of June. A few days after its intended closing date, it has now held its final close oversubscribed at €1.08 billion, although Cube had a hard cap of €1.5 billion.

To date, the fund has already invested €290 million of its capital. Recent investments include a multi-million euro contract to deploy a 2,000-kilometre submarine telecommunication cable from Cadiz, in mainland Spain, to Gran Canaria and La Palma in the Canary Islands, as well as a 30 percent equity stake in Canadian renewable energy developer Boralex’s European business for €33 million.

In addition, Cube has invested in several regulated projects in the renewable, rail, telecoms, waste and water sectors across Spain, France and the UK.

Montreal’s Stable Capital acted as placement agent for the fund.