While the performance associated with illiquid assets like infrastructure plays a growing role in the alternative investment decisions of pension funds, these funds are also now considering investing in infrastructure businesses to gain exposure to predictable, a-cyclical and inflation-linked cash flows in an effort to hedge future liabilities.
Identified as one of the priority research topics by the EDHEC-Risk Institute International Advisory Board, in 2012 the Institute launched a theme-specific research programme on infrastructure investment and established two research chairs dedicated to long-term investment in infrastructure equity and debt, respectively, with active support from the private sector. The underlying aim was to deliver original research in the underdeveloped field of infrastructure investment management and present this research directly to institutional investors, and also to develop a methodology for the creation of an investment benchmark for unlisted infrastructure equity and debt.
In 2012, Natixis endowed a Research Chair at EDHEC-Risk to focus on the definition, nature and risk-adjusted performance measurement of private infrastructure debt, with a focus on project financing debt.
In 2013, Meridiam and Campbell-Lutyens endowed a three-year Research Chair at EDHEC to focus on the development of better definitions and valuation approaches to unlisted infrastructure investments.
In October 2015, based on EDHEC-Risk Institute’s reputation in the field of infrastructure research, MAS agreed to provide a five-year grant for the creation of a dedicated research centre on infrastructure at EDHEC. The objective of the grant was to support a programme of data collection on unlisted infrastructure investment as well as the development of a dedicated asset pricing and risk measurement technology for the benchmarking of unlisted infrastructure investments (debt and equity).
In 2016, EDHEC-Risk Institute contributed to the launch of EDHEC Infra & Private Assets Research Institute (EDHECinfra), a spin-off dedicated to benchmarking private infrastructure investments, the culmination of the Institute’s sustained efforts in this area over a 4-year period. EDHECinfra is a provider of research and indices on unlisted infrastructure investments.It has also developed ground breaking research in the area of climate risk, social acceptability measurements for private assets.
EDHEC Infra & Private Assets is a venture of EDHEC Business School. We are a provider of indexes and analytics for the private equity and debt investment universe. Because the majority of private assets are not easily proxied by publicly traded ones, there has traditionally been a vast knowledge gap when it comes to gauging the prices of these assets and their evolution. We are closing that gap with analytics and calculated indexes that already cover 25 countries representing an investable universe of 7,000 companies. We are based in Singapore and London.
We produce research in the asset pricing of private assets, with a strong focus on infrastructure. This includes frontier topics such as climate risks and social acceptability.
We maintain the infraMetrics® platform: an online information systems that gives access to key market indices including the infra300® and infra100® series. InfraMetrics also includes a wealth of valuation data and analytics, risk metrics, fund and peer group benchmarks.
The privateMetrics® platform will be launched in 2H2023.
Access EDHEC Infra & Private Assets website