Who Are Europe’s Biggest Infrastructure Investors?

(November 27, 2013) — PGGM, ATP, insurer CNP Assurance, PensionDanmark, and the Railways Pension Trustee Group are among the investors with the greatest allocation to infrastructure assets in Europe today.

The findings, presented in Preqin’s latest special report on European infrastructure, showed Dutch pension giant PGGM had the largest allocation to infrastructure assets at €4 billion.

It plans to target global infrastructure assets in the next few months, along with 47% of European infrastructure investors, according to Preqin.

But the majority of European infrastructure investors were targeting European and North American assets.

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Preqin’s survey found 66% of them are targeting European investments in the next 12 months, compared with 24% seeking similar investments in North America. Just 6% are targeting infrastructure investments in Asia.

ATP already has €1.9 billion invested in infrastructure assets, and is targeting both North America and Europe next year. The same was true for PensionDanmark, which has €1.1 billion in infrastructure assets.

The German government agency DEG and German asset manager KGAL—both prolific investors in infrastructure assets with almost €3 billion in investments between them—were only targeting European assets.

The majority of infrastructure deals (44%) completed in between October 2012 and October 2013 involved social infrastructure, such as schools and healthcare facilities.

This was followed by energy (30% of infrastructure deals), transport (14%), utilities and telecoms (5% each), and waste management (1%).

One of the key reasons for the increase in annual European infrastructure deal ﬂow has been the growth of the European unlisted infrastructure fund market, Preqin said.

Europe-focused unlisted infrastructure funds holding final closes have raised €9 billion to date in 2013, the same amount that was raised by all the Europe-focused funds that closed between 2000 and 2006.

“With more investors seeking to gain exposure to the stable long-term yields often available from established European infrastructure assets, a larger number of fund managers are bringing Europe-focused funds to market and putting capital to work in European assets,” said the report.

The full report can be found here.

(November 27, 2013)— Sweden’s First AP Pension Fund (AP1) has appointed former PIMCO senior vice-president Mikael Angberg as CIO.

Angberg, who will start in his new role on December 9, was also the head of business development for the Nordics at PIMCO. Prior to that, he was head of Nordic institutional equity derivatives sales at BNP Paribas.

His CV also boasts a role at Goldman Sachs Asset Management as head of institutional sales in the Nordics, as well as being a financial engineer at AXA Investment Management, and a quantitative analyst at CERN.

Johan Magnusson, CEO of AP1, welcomed Angberg to the fund, adding that his broad experience would be of great benefit.

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AP1 is one of five AP funds which provides the Swedish public pension income if the government’s coffers should fall short.

It manages SK240 billion ($36.5 billion) in a global portfolio of equities, fixed income and alternative investments such as real estate, private equity funds and hedge funds.

Swedish pension funds have fared relatively well during the financial crisis. AP1’s latest annual report, published in February this year, showed the fund had enjoyed a return of 11.3% after expenses.

Over the past decade, the fund has returned 7%, 1.5% more than its 10-year target.