Nest Seeds New Infrastructure Debt Fund With $708M Investment

The National Employment Savings Trust, the U.K.’s largest pension fund by membership, announced Tuesday that it will seed a new infrastructure debt fund from Australian asset manager IFM Investors Pty. Ltd. with a 530-million-pound ($708 million) investment.

The debt fund will focus on European sub-investment-grade infrastructure projects. According to a Nest statement, the fund will amplify its holdings of U.K.-based private assets such as fiber, wind, waste-to-energy, bus and rail infrastructure.

Nest finalized the purchase of a 10% stake in IFM Investors holding company Industry Super Holdings earlier this month. The asset manager is co-owned by Nest, its first international investor, and 15 Australian superannuation funds. IFM managed $144.8 billion in assets as of March 31.

The investment is part of Nest’s plan to invest 5 billion pounds in private markets through IFM by 2030. The pension fund is a signatory of the recent Mansion House Accord, which calls for the U.K’s defined contribution plans to invest at least 10% of their assets in alternative investments by the end of the decade, with at least 5% of their assets invested in U.K.-based private assets.

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“We’re pleased to have taken this exciting first step with IFM, one of the world’s leading global infrastructure investment managers,” Nest CIO Liz Fernando said in a statement. “We came together to develop sophisticated investment strategies like this one, and we look forward to co-creating more opportunities on behalf of our members.”

Nest already allocates 17% of its assets to alternative investments and aims to increase this figure to 30% by 2030. Following the signing of the Mansion House Accord, Fernando commented that about 60% of the pension fund’s private assets are invested domestically.

Nest manages $60 billion in assets for 13.5 million members, as of September 2024.