Macquarie garners £770m across UK debt strategy

Macquarie Infrastructure Debt Investment Solutions has raised £770 million ($974.5 million; €873.8 million) to be invested in UK debt in the last six months.

The funds include an £80 million first close on Macquarie’s second UK infrastructure debt pooled fund MIDF2, launched in April last year. The vehicle, which requires minimum investments of £10 million, is a follow-on to MIDIS’ first £829 million UK infrastructure debt fund.

The latter became fully invested earlier this year, when it agreed to provide £502 million to help finance the Quad Gas Group consortium’s purchase of a 61 percent interest in the UK’s National Grid gas distribution networks.

Macquarie said further closes for MIDF2 are expected later in 2017. Also this year, MIDIS acted as debt provider to a £100 million facility for the London-listed listed NextEnergy Solar Fund and financed three Scottish wind farms developed by Banks Renewables with £150 million.

The remaining pledges to MIDIS are spread across separately managed accounts, with most of the commitments coming largely from UK pension schemes.

“As rising inflation continues to threaten the solvency of UK pension schemes, a growing number of scheme trustees and consultants are capitalising on UK inflation-linked infrastructure debt as a more economic means of matching inflation-linked liabilities,” said Andrew Robertson, co-head of MIDIS.

The unit has raised £4.5 billion since 2012 and invested £1.7 billion into the UK infrastructure market alone since 2014.