CEE Fund Advisory founded

Lampe Equi­ty Man­age­ment sub­sidiary will pro­vide invest­ment advice to new infra­struc­ture fund

Lampe Equi­ty Man­age­ment GmbH, Bankhaus Lampe’s Ham­burg-based invest­ment com­pa­ny, cov­ers infra­struc­ture as well as renew­ables, ship­ping, real estate, forestry and pri­vate equi­ty. Its sub­sidiary, CEE Fund Advi­so­ry GmbH (CEEFA), has now won a new man­date to pro­vide invest­ment advice to an infra­struc­ture debt fund launched by an inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned alter­na­tive invest­ment fund man­ag­er. With a tar­get vol­ume of one bil­lion euros, the fund will acquire tranch­es of infra­struc­ture project loans. The fund’s project finance and dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ner is Deutsche Bank.

Infra­struc­ture projects are becom­ing increas­ing­ly attrac­tive to insti­tu­tion­al investors
The nature of infra­struc­ture loans makes them espe­cial­ly suit­able for insti­tu­tion­al investors. In the future, they will be treat­ed pref­er­en­tial­ly under the reg­u­la­to­ry cap­i­tal require­ments for insur­ance com­pa­nies. “Road projects, new hos­pi­tals and large pow­er plants based on renew­ables all involve long-term fund­ing and are com­par­a­tive­ly low-risk, which meets the require­ments of insti­tu­tion­al investors. The new­ly launched infra­struc­ture debt fund is there­fore a suit­able addi­tion to the port­fo­lios of insur­ers or pen­sion funds,” explains Jan Kiel, CEO of CEEFA.

Polit­i­cal sup­port for pri­vate sec­tor involve­ment in infra­struc­ture loans
New pub­lic sec­tor infra­struc­ture con­struc­tion and the upgrad­ing of exist­ing infra­struc­ture are being dri­ven by pri­vate cap­i­tal. Politi­cians wel­come and sup­port this involve­ment. This is reflect­ed in reg­u­la­to­ry changes for insur­ers and oth­er insti­tu­tion­al investors. As of 2 April 2016, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, among oth­er things, sim­pli­fied the require­ments for infra­struc­ture invest­ments based on debt cap­i­tal instru­ments under Sol­ven­cy II . As a result, cer­tain infra­struc­ture invest­ments will be treat­ed pref­er­en­tial­ly in terms of the cap­i­tal charges. Such invest­ments may there­fore gen­er­ate high­er returns on equi­ty than oth­er invest­ments with sim­i­lar rat­ings and matu­ri­ties. Insti­tu­tion­al investors are increas­ing­ly recog­nis­ing the eco­nom­ic and reg­u­la­to­ry ben­e­fits of invest­ing in infra­struc­ture projects. This is reflect­ed in increased demand for such invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. The infra­struc­ture debt fund advised by CEEFA gives inter­est­ed insti­tu­tion­al investors access to Deutsche Bank’s project finance port­fo­lio and pipeline on the basis of an exclu­sive agree­ment with the bank. The fund invests in spe­cif­ic projects at an ear­ly stage and will there­fore be able to gen­er­ate rev­enues with­out delay. Ini­tial­ly, there will be two eco­nom­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed sub-funds of about EUR 500 mil­lion each. Inter­est­ed insti­tu­tion­al investors can already sub­scribe for the first sub-fund, which focus­es on infra­struc­ture debt invest­ments in euros. The sec­ond sub-fund, with a focus on sim­i­lar US dol­lar invest­ments, is due to fol­low in the course of 2016.

1 Offi­cial Jour­nal of the Euro­pean Union, DEL­E­GAT­ED REG­U­LA­TION (EU) 2016/467 OF THE COM­MIS­SION dat­ed 30 Sep­tem­ber 2015