Infrastructure Investor Debt 30: The biggest and the best

The past 12 months have been tough for all asset classes, yet infrastructure debt still managed to post fundraising growth, albeit at a much slower pace as volatility hurt global investment. Over the following pages, we profile the 30 firms leading this trend in the unlisted infrastructure debt sector.

The Infrastructure Investor Debt 30 ranks firms by capital raised for debt strategies over the preceding five years. This year’s list saw total capital raised grow by roughly $10 billion, well below the $23 billion increase posted in last year’s list. To make the top 10, each manager successfully raised at least $7 billion. The infrastructure sector has particularly benefited from the rising interest rate environment as illustrated by Infrastructure Investor’s LP Perspectives survey, where 30 percent of respondents plan to lift allocations to the asset class in 2024, against just 4 percent saying they will invest less capital.

European managers again filled out the list this year as 15 GPs made it into the top 30, compared with 11 from North America and four from the Asia-Pacific region. Four new entrants made it onto the ranking, half headquartered in the US and half in Europe. New York’s Blackstone came in at number 10, the highest slot for a new addition to the list.

BlackRock topped the ranking for a third consecutive year, and Ares also maintained its second place. Macquarie climbed one spot to wrap up the top three.

Jeetu Balchandani, global head of infrastructure debt at BlackRock, says: “There is pent-up demand from a more stagnant 2023 across the industry, and the current landscape is exciting. Advances in technology, supportive government policy, an increased rate environment and energy transition thematics are creating a strong pipeline of opportunities.”

Equity fundraising differed slightly from infrastructure debt, as highlighted by the Infrastructure Investor 100 ranking. There has been little correlation between the two in recent years, but Macquarie, Brookfield and Blackstone each made the top 10 in both lists.

Methodology

The 2024 II Debt ranking is based on the amount of direct infrastructure debt investment capital raised by firms between 1 January 2018 and 31 August 2023. 

  Where two firms have raised the same amount of capital over this time period, the higher II Debt ranking rank goes to the firm with the largest active pool of capital raised since 2018 (ie, the biggest single fund). If there is still a ‘tie’ after taking into account the size of a single fund, we give greater weight to the firm that has raised the most capital within the past one or two years.  

We give highest priority to information that we receive from or confirm with the infrastructure managers themselves. When firms confirm details, we seek to ‘trust but verify’. Some details simply cannot be verified by us, and in these cases we defer to the honour system. In order to encourage co-operation from infrastructure firms that might make the II Debt ranking, we do not disclose which firms have aided us on background and which have not. Lacking confirmation of details from the firms themselves, we seek to corroborate information using firms’ websites, press releases, limited partner disclosures, etc. 

 What counts?  

• Structures  
• Limited partnerships
• Open-ended vehicles (capital must be raised within the specified dates)
• Co-investment funds/separate accounts capital raised by infrastructure managers that happen to be publicly traded
• Seed capital and GP commitment  
• Strategies
• Debt strategies  
• Mezzanine funds  
• Financing of existing assets (brownfield), development-phase assets (greenfield) or a mix of both  

What does not count?

• Expected capital commitments
• Public funds
• Contributions from sponsoring entities
• Capital raised for funds of funds
• Capital raised for infrastructure funds that seek to own assets for a period of time
• Secondaries vehicles
• Real estate funds
• Private equity funds
• Equity funds: core, core-plus, value-add, opportunistic
• Hedge funds
• Capital raised on a deal-by-deal basis
• Leverage
• PIPE investments