M&G Investments Announces The Launch Of The M&G Global Listed Infrastructure Feeder Fund
M&G Investments Announces The Launch Of The M&G Global Listed Infrastructure Feeder Fund. In response to significant demand from local investors, M&G Investments is excited to announce the launch of the M&G Global Listed Infrastructure Feeder Fund. This new rand-denominated global equity fund will enable South African institutional and retail clients to gain easy access to global listed infrastructure assets and their attractive growth and inflation protection benefits. The Feeder Fund, now available directly from M&G in South Africa, invests into the existing Luxembourg-domiciled US dollar-denominated M&G (Lux) Global Listed Infrastructure Fund. The company has also applied for approval to distribute this US dollar fund in South Africa in terms of Section 65 of the Collective Investment Schemes Control Act (CISCA).
The launch comes at a time when global listed infrastructure investments are increasingly popular around the world for offering diversification, steady income growth and inflation protection. The Fund, which already has a successful five-year track record and US$3.2 billion (approximately R60 billion) under management, invests across a well-diversified mix of listed infrastructure-related equities around the world.
Explains Pieter Hugo, Chief Client and Distribution Officer at M&G Investments: “Far from being a traditional fund focused solely on utilities and other basic infrastructure projects like roads and bridges, our fund is much more varied and innovative – it includes renewable energy solutions, health, educational and civic facilities as well as an array of ‘evolving infrastructure’ needed for the global digital economy. These can encompass cellphone towers, data centres, satellite infrastructure and optical networks, to name a few. These longer-term projects generate growing income streams, often contractually linked to inflation and able to weather economic downturns. These qualities enable resilient dividend growth for investors who benefit from their compounding ability.”
According to Alex Araujo, who has been managing the fund since its inception over five years ago, decarbonisation and energy security are playing increasingly important roles in the asset class and are important investment opportunities represented in the Fund. “While this asset class has often been ignored, it has a remarkable compounding ability over time and is now at the centre of the global energy transition. Utilities are the deployers of renewable energy and are also putting infrastructure in place to ensure energy security.”
