North Dakota State Investment Board (SIB) is planning to diversify its infrastructure portfolio by reducing its exposure to a JP Morgan Asset Management fund and investing in a new vehicle managed by Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets (MIRA).
Most of the pension fund’s $544m (€473m) infrastructure portfolio consists of a $407m holding in the JP Morgan Infrastructure Investments Fund, an open-ended vehicle established in 2006.
A board meeting report shows that it plans to issue a partial redemption from the fund and invest up to $140m into an unnamed MIRA fund.
MIRA recently raised €2.5bn for its Macquarie Super Core Infrastructure Fund and, according to Preqin, is seeking to raise $5bn for Macquarie Infrastructure Partners IV.
The rest of North Dakota’s infrastructure portfolio is made up of investments in funds, including I Squared Capital’s latest vehicle which it committed to earlier this year.
It also has holdings in Grosvenor Custom Infrastructure I and II, and an Asian infrastructure fund managed by The Rohatyn Group.
The board meeting report said North Dakota SIB’s infrastructure portfolio “would benefit from more closed-end fund exposure, as deploying capital into new primary commitments in a programmatic fashion enhances diversification by manager, geography, sectors, and asset lifecycles”.
David Hunter, CIO at North Dakota SIB, said: “We are planning to make a commitment to [the Macquarie fund] somewhere in the range of $100m to $140m.”
He said this was likely to happen at the next board meeting on 26 October.
