EBRD approves up to €100m for Meridiam Fund II

The board of directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has green-lighted an equity investment of up to €100 million in a sub-vehicle that will form part of Paris-based fund manager Meridiam Infrastructure’s second European infrastructure fund, a spokeswoman from the bank said.

The final amount of the EBRD’s equity investment is now being negotiated, the spokeswoman said, but could reach €100 million, the bank had indicated in an earlier statement. The investment will be made in the Meridiam Infrastructure Eastern Europe Fund (MIEEF), a sub-fund of the Meridiam Infrastructure Europe Fund II, for which Meridiam has raised at least half of its €1 billion targeted amount, as reported earlier in Infrastructure Investor.

The EBRD spokeswoman explained that the sub-fund structure is necessary because the bank is not allowed to invest in Western Europe, to which Meridiam’s second infrastructure fund will be exposed. This means that the sub-vehicle may be limited in size solely to the EBRD’s final commitment. Meridiam expects to reach final close on its second European fund by the end of the year.

MIEEF will target public-private partnership (PPP) projects in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and, to a lesser extent, Turkey, the EBRD had said in a previous statement. Meridiam already owns two PPP investments in the region: Slovakia’s R1 and Poland’s A2 motorways.

Meridiam is also fundraising for a dedicated North American infrastructure fund, targeting $1 billion. That fund reached a first close of $100 million last June. Since then, the fund has raised at least an additional $70 million from two investors, according to a regulatory filing Meridiam made with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late April, giving it at least $170 million in total commitments.

In addition to the two vehicles it is now raising, Meridiam also manages a €600 million infrastructure fund, its first infrastructure vehicle, closed in 2008.