CBRE Caledon Taps Investors for Global Infrastructure

(Bloomberg) -- CBRE Caledon, an affiliate of CBRE Group Inc., has begun discussing a new global infrastructure fund with institutional investors including pensions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The vehicle, known as the CBRE Caledon Global Infrastructure Fund, will differ from some recently raised funds in part because it’s open-ended, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Pam Barnett, a spokeswoman for CBRE Global Investors, declined to comment.

The fund’s gross asset value was $35.1 million as of March 29 and it’s seeking minimum investment commitments of $10 million, according to an SEC filing.

The fundraising push follows CBRE’s 2017 acquisition of Toronto-based Caledon Capital Management Inc. “Infrastructure is a strategic component of an allocation to real assets, and we expect client demand for it will continue to increase,” Ritson Ferguson, chief executive officer of CBRE Global Investors, said at the time.

Infrastructure managers raised a record $175 billion of unspent capital as of March and had 210 funds in the market seeking a combined $190 billion, according to a Preqin report published this month.

Eighty-one percent of investors surveyed by Preqin Pro plan to commit less than $100 million per infrastructure fund in the year ahead, up from 49 percent this time last year. That indicates potential concern about fund performance because of high valuations, or that some may have nearly exhausted their allocations to the sector, the data provider said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gillian Tan in New York at gtan129@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net, Josh Friedman, Dan Reichl

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