KKR adds QIC’s Andrew Jennings to APAC infra team

KKR has bolstered its infrastructure team in the Asia-Pacific region by appointing Andrew Jennings as a senior director.

Jennings joins the firm from QIC, where he was a principal in the fund manager’s global infrastructure team and led on transactions in the energy and utilities space.

A KKR spokeswoman confirmed that Jennings joined the firm this month as a senior member of its regional infrastructure team and that he would help to source investment opportunities and manage assets within the portfolio.

Jennings was named in documents as a leader of QIC’s A$470 million ($322 million; €290 million) bid for Australian Securities Exchange-listed Pacific Energy, a deal that was completed in December.

Prior to his time at QIC he spent more than eight years with Deutsche Bank’s corporate finance team working in the utilities sector.

Jennings will report to David Luboff, partner and head of Asia-Pacific infrastructure, a former senior managing director at Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets who joined KKR in early 2019.

Luboff told Infrastructure Investor last August that KKR was aiming to recruit around 12 people to its APAC infrastructure team in order to support its efforts to increase its exposure to the asset class in the region.

He singled out India, South Korea, the Philippines, Japan and South-East Asia as specific regions the strategy would target. He added that Chinese and Australian assets would be pursued on an opportunistic basis.

KKR closed its first deal in the region last April, when it partnered with Singapore’s GIC to acquire a 57 percent stake in IndiGrid. The Indian infrastructure investment trust manages a portfolio of 11 electricity transmission assets.

According to sources, the firm launched its first Asia-focused infrastructure fund in June, KKR Asia Pacific Infrastructure Investors, which is targeting between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in capital.

KKR declined to comment on fundraising.