FY 2019 fundraising stumbles

After threatening to be a record year for unlisted infrastructure fundraising, 2019 is set to end on a lower note than 2018.

That is according to Infrastructure Investor’s near-final numbers for 2019 (valid as of 6 January), which show fundraising decreasing by approximately $10 billion and ending the year at $93.9 billion. That figure includes a record $22 billion final close for Global Infrastructure Partners’ flagship fourth fund, to date the largest unlisted infrastructure vehicle ever raised. But it excludes the final close of Brookfield Asset Management’s fourth global vehicle, the other mega-fund in market, which is also set to wrap-up at around the $20 billion mark.

The flipside to that is that 2020 starts with some marquee names still in the market. Our top three funds in market – Brookfield Infrastructure Fund IV, Stonepeak Infrastructure Fund IV and Antin Infrastructure Partners IV – are targeting nearly $33 billion between them, with Brookfield and Antin expected to close during the first quarter.

Looking back, 2019 shows the infrastructure market continuing to concentrate, with 60 funds closed compared with 78 in 2018. In fact, the five largest funds closed in 2019 accounted for 56 percent of the year’s fundraising. GIP IV alone added up to 23 percent of the total raised. The average fund size in 2019 stood at $1.56 billion, compared with $1.33 billion in 2018.

To learn more about these and other trends, watch out for our full fundraising report, to be published later this month.