Stafford Capital Partners has fully deployed its fourth infrastructure secondaries fund and made the first investment for its successive vehicle.

In the third quarter of the year, the specialist real assets and private markets manager made its final investments for Stafford Infrastructure Secondaries Fund (SISF) IV and its first investment for SISF V, totalling $145m across three separate transactions.

Stafford Capital said the transactions comprise a $30m co-investment in a US data centre platform in the US, placing $50m in a global fund and making $65m secondary investment into a recent vintage fund.

In January, Stafford Capital announced plans to raise €1.3bn for SISF V, a fund created to invest in existing core infrastructure funds mainly in Europe, North America and Australasia through limited partner and general partner-led secondaries.

SISF V, which is categorised as an Article 8 product under the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, targets energy transition assets while strongly limiting its fossil fuel-related exposure, the manager said at the time. SISF IV, Stafford Capital’s fourth fund raised €731m at its final close in August last year.

Stafford Capital said SISF IV is now fully deployed with 20 deals in 22 positions across 277 assets as of November 2023 and well ahead of its net-zero climate targets.

Angus Whiteley, Stafford Capital’s CEO, said: “The rate of deployment of SISF IV has been swift and ahead of expectations. There has been great interest and support from investors for a secondaries strategy, that is built around risk control and net-zero targets.”

William Greene, managing partner of Stafford Infrastructure, said: “These three transactions were an opportunity to capitalise on our extremely attractive pipeline. The growth outlook for digital infrastructure is very strong, but the asset class is costly to access as a result.

“Through our secondaries approach, investors can take advantage of the asset class often at material discounts, while also avoiding the blind pool investment risk which comes with primary investments.”

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