Ardian is buying €300m worth of stakes in infrastructure funds held by UniCredit.

The investment manager has signed a sale-and-purchase agreement with the Italian bank to buy a number of limited partnership interests.

Ardian, which has a team dedicated to buying fund stakes on the secondary market, said it is the largest secondary infrastructure transaction this year.

Last year, the company’s carried out $4.8bn (€4.07bn) of secondary trades, including infrastructure funds.

Mark Benedetti, managing director and co-head of Ardian US, said: “This is the culmination of a highly collaborative relationship with UniCredit.”

He added: “Our team, spread out across the globe, is able to access a vast amount of information via a database of 1,400 funds and 10,000 underlying companies, which gives us excellent perspective on pricing and quality, allowing us to be opportunistic on behalf of our investors.”