IJInvestor has released its full-year fundraising report for 2020 – in which infrastructure funds managed to raise more capital than in 2019, despite the global pandemic.

2020 – the year that couldn’t end soon enough – is now behind us, and it is time to tally up the results for the infrastructure fundraising market.

The bottom line – infrastructure funds raised 7% more capital ($96.4 billion) from investors in 2020 than they did in 2019 – may seem counterintuitive against the backdrop of economic mayhem inflicted by Covid-19. It’s all the more surprising given that the infrastructure market did not go completely unscathed – for instance, in the case of empty airports or overwhelmed hospitals.

But after an initial freeze when the virus first became a global problem, investors got back to work and capital continued to flow into sector. Indeed, the pandemic even coincided with (if not triggered) an unprecedented surge in sustainable investing.

Just a sampling of IJInvestor’s proprietary, data-driven insights includes:

• in 2020, fewer funds were oversubscribed. There was also an increase in the number of funds that did not meet their target sizes. 
• in H2, for the first time the average size of debt funds that closed was slightly higher than the average size of equity funds.
• the percentage of European LPs in funds that closed during 2020 has dropped significantly, from 52% in 2019 to 36% in 2020. Asian LPs were willing to take more risk by investing in new funds that launched in 2020.
• investors pumped an additional $5.5 billion into telecoms transactions in 2020 compared with the year before.
• spending on oil & gas assets dropped precipitously – by over $20 billion

To read the report (which appears in the reports section) in full, CLICK HERE...