Five Danish and Norwegian pension funds have committed DKK8.8bn (€1.2bn) to a new infrastructure investment fund run by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP).
Danish labour-market fund PensionDanmark is the largest investor, putting in DKK4bn Copenhagen Infrastructure III.
Other investors in what is known as the fund’s anchor group are Norway’s KLP, the Danish doctors’ pension fund Lægernes Pension, the Danish lawyers’ and economists’ pension fund JØP and the Danish engineers’ pension fund DIP.
CIP said it would begin further fundraising following the first close.
The new fund will have the same focus as CIP’s previous funds, investing in energy infrastructure with stable cash flows, including onshore and offshore wind farms, solar energy, biomass-fired power plants and transmission grid systems, PensionDanmark said.
Torben Möger Pedersen, chief executive of PensionDanmark, said: “We have had a very satisfactory collaboration with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and we are very pleased with the team’s ability to source investments and to attract investors.”
As a 20-year “buy-and-hold” fund, the investment was a truly long-term one, PensionDanmark said.
Christian Skakkebæk, senior partner at CIP, said: “The energy infrastructure market currently shows an attractive growth due to the strong commercial breakthrough recently in several renewable energy technologies.”
He said the firm had already found a number of “attractive exclusive investment opportunities” for the new fund, originated in cooperation with CIP’s industrial partners.
PensionDanmark said it has 10% of its DKK222bn of total assets under management invested in different types of infrastructure, and half of these investments were managed by CIP.
