Global fund manager IFM Investors has revalued its Australian infrastructure assets downwards by 7.5%.
The Melbourne-based manager owns 15 assets in Australia, including airports in several cities such as Brisbane, Adelaide and Darwin, along with toll roads, utilities and ports in NSW and Queensland.
The A$163.2bn (€90.7bn) firm manages A$68.1bn in infrastructure on behalf of more than 400 institutional investors.
IFM spokesman said: “IFM Investors has responded to changing market conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic by applying an out of cycle revaluation to certain assets in our infrastructure portfolios, resulting in the valuation of these Australian assets being reduced by an average of 7.56%.”
He did not offer details of the sectors most affected.
But industry sources said it had decided to adjust the valuation of its Australian assets on the back of a 30% crash in equities markets and turmoil across bond and fixed income markets.
Listed infrastructure has taken a beating with the share price of Sydney Airport falling 42.4% in the calendar year to date. Shares in Transurban, the country’s largest toll road operator, are down 25%, Atlas Arteria, another toll road company down 34.2% and energy group Spark down 12.7%.
IFM made no reference to the valuation of its overseas assets, but IPE Real Assets understands that the fund manager is likely to give clarity to other parts of its portfolio in the coming days.
Overseas, IFM owns five assets in North America and 12 assets in Europe. These include British airport group Manchester Airports, Indiana Toll Road, Polish deepwater container port DCT Gdanskj and Vancouver and New York ports operator Global Container Terminal.
Observers said many smaller industry super funds would have experienced similar downgrades because they had money invested with IFM Investors. These funds have also made adjustments to their portfolios.
A large super fund for tertiary and research institutions, UniSuper, with A$85bn under management, had dropped the value of its property portfolio by 10% and its infrastructure by 6%.
Also this week, AustralianSuper announced that it had cut its property and infrastructure assets by 7.5% on average.
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