Ardian halfway to €10bn target for Fund VI – exclusive

Roughly seven months after launching its sixth flagship fund, Paris-based Ardian has raised more than €5 billion for the vehicle, Infrastructure Investor has learned.

Ardian Infrastructure Fund VI, which has a final target of €10 billion and a hard-cap of €12 billion, will follow the same core-plus strategy of its predecessor, investing in renewable energy, transportation and digital infrastructure. Should Fund VI reach its hard-cap, it will be double the size of Fund V, which in March 2019 closed on €6.1 billion, making it the largest Europe-focused fund at the time. According to one source, Ardian expects to reach a final close in H2.

In terms of geography, Fund VI will primarily target all of Europe (OECD) with a maximum of 20 percent to be invested in the US and Canada. It should be noted that Ardian also has an Americas-focused strategy – Ardian Americas Infrastructure Fund V is its latest iteration in that series – but at $2.1 billion, the assets it invests in tend to require smaller cheque sizes, therefore avoiding any overlap with the larger European fund.

A source close to the fundraise said US pension funds have shown a very strong appetite for Ardian’s latest infrastructure fund.

Fund VI, which is targeting a net IRR of between 12 and 15 percent, has already deployed capital in three assets. They include the acquisitions of: Attero, a Netherlands-based waste management and circular economy platform; Verne Global, a UK-based data centre platform that also has a presence in the Nordics; and a 15 percent stake in London’s Heathrow Airport. Of the three deals, only Attero has reached financial close at the time of writing.

Ardian invests across a number of asset classes, including private equity, real estate and secondaries. Last October, the manager partnered with aDryada, a French developer of nature-based projects, to launch Averrhoa Nature-Based Solutions, a strategy that “aims to finance projects to restore forests, wetlands and mangroves in order to sequester large quantities of carbon”, Ardian said at the time. The strategy includes an Article 9 fund – which sources told us is targeting €500 million – that will be managed by Ardian with aDryada acting as adviser.

Ardian declined to comment for this story.