Money manager AGF Management Ltd. has achieved the first close on its infrastructure fund, a project that it launched about 1 . 5 years back as a way of diversifying an investment opportunities open to its institutional and retail clients.
After the markets closed on Wednesday AGF and InstarAGF Asset Management Inc., the entity which will manage the investments, announced they had received $372 million in “firm” equity commitments from a number of institutional and value investors located in North America and Europe.
At $372 million, the total amount raised is all about half of exactly what the fund, the InstarAGF Essential Infrastructure Fund, had hoped to raise. In a release, AGF added there is the potential for “cornerstone investors,” to take a position another $50 million before the closing from the fund. The goal would be to raise $750 million by the end of the year. The fund started seeking investors last April.
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Blake Goldring, AGF’s leader, expressed his appreciation for which the fund has raised. “Our strategy has been to diversify and build [a platform of] alternatives and be a person within this space. This really vindicates our investment into this sector.” The push into alternatives (it also has branched into purchasing mid-stream oil and gas) gives AGF a fourth leg to complement its retail, institutional and net worth divisions.
The fund has already made two investments for a total outlay of $135 million: it acquired a desire for the passenger terminal at Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport and also invested in a 30-megawatt wind power development project in Bc.
The fund is seeking investments in both the power and utilities sector or civil and social infrastructure assets “that exhibit sustainable downside protection, typically because of long-term contracts, concession agreements or perhaps a regulatory regime.” If this was launched the aim was to achieve annual returns within the 8 per cent – 14 per cent range.
bcritchley@nationalpost.com
