Macquarie Super Core Series 2 fundraising reaches €1bn – exclusive

Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets has raised about €1 billion to date for the second series of its Macquarie Super Core Infrastructure Fund, sources have told Infrastructure Investor.

The minimum target for Series 2 is believed to be €1.5 billion, the same as for the first series, which was surpassed to reach €2.5 billion in June 2018 following commitments from about 40 investors.

At the time, Leigh Harrison, head of MIRA in EMEA, told Infrastructure Investor that it would begin fundraising for the second series once a third asset had been acquired by the first series. It is not known if an additional asset has been added to UK-based gas pipeline network Cadent Gas and Finnish electricity distribution company Elenia.

A presentation by MIRA during fundraising for Series 1 to the South Carolina Retirement System, which invested €125 million, indicated that MIRA was originally planning to raise Series 2 during 2018 and Series 3 in 2020.

Macquarie declined to comment on the fundraising process.

According to the pension documents, the MSCIF vintage targets regulated assets, predominantly in Europe but with room to invest in the US, Canada and Australia. It targets net returns of 7-8 percent across its 20-year structure, with a 5 percent cash yield. Performance fees are charged at 20 percent of the vehicle’s yield over a 4 percent yield hurdle per year and investors receive exposure to all assets in the fund, regardless of the series in which they invest.

“The target return for our traditional European diversified infrastructure fund is 10 to 12 percent net. However, the target return for the typical asset for this fund trades well below that level and is therefore no longer suitable for the European diversified infrastructure fund strategy,” Harrison told us in June 2018.

MIRA’s launch of its Super Core strategy was followed by Brookfield launching a similar vehicle in May 2018. The open-ended fund disclosed it had raised $1.6 billion in August 2019 and is looking to raise a total of $5 billion over the first three to five years of the open-ended fund’s life. The following month it made its third investment through the acquisition of five public-private partnership assets in Spain from DIF Capital Partners.