Alt Investments
Infrastructure, "Real Assets" Ride Rising Escalator: Guinness Global Investors

We talk to a manager of a newly-launched real assets fund about infrastructure, ranging from electricity generation through to "hybrid" communities for seniors in the US. The asset class continues to proliferate and change.
  Governments in much of the developed world need capital, and yet
  public budgets are stretched and voters are upset about rising
  taxes. 
  
  Unsurprisingly, therefore, there is demand for private capital
  solutions, whether for building data centres and healthcare
  surgeries, fixing roads, expanding airports and other
  infrastructure.
  
  After the post-pandemic spike to interest rates in the UK, the
  rest of Europe and North America, rates have softened somewhat.
  And real estate/infrastructure often comes with the predictable
  cashflows and degree of inflation protection – particularly on
  the infrastructure side – that long-term investors seek. Wealth
  managers and family offices, for example. 
  
  Opportunities in this area are considerable and
  growing. 
  
  “It is a very large and liquid universe that you can invest in,”
  Mark Brennan (pictured below), manager of the recently launched
  Guinness Global Real Assets Fund, told WealthBriefing in
  an interview. The fund is run by Guinness
  Global Investors.
   
Mark Brennan
  The Guinness Global Real Assets Fund is a sub-fund of Guinness
  Asset Management Funds plc, an Irish OEIC.
  
  Brennan joined the firm after having worked as a lead fund
  manager at Foresight. At that firm he was manager of the FP
  Foresight UK Infrastructure Income Fund, the FP Foresight Global
  Real Infrastructure Fund and the FP Foresight Sustainable Real
  Estate Securities Fund. His prior investment experience was built
  at Standard Life Investments and the UK Green Investment
  Bank.
  
  “People are looking at the [real assets] sector again with fresh
  eyes after having not looked at it for a few years…then there was
  the [rising] interest rate environment. There is the benefit of
  relative performance that they [such assets] can bring to a
  portfolio,” he said. 
  
  The real assets/infrastructure story is not new, of course, but
  it has certainly seen an uptick in momentum. Large asset
  managers such as BlackRock, for example, have ramped up
  infrastructure efforts. In January 2024 BlackRock said it had
  bought Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP). In December 2023,
  Middle East alternative investment firm Investcorp bought a 50
  per cent stake in the $4.8 billion infrastructure business of US
  firm Corsair Capital, to give another example. For years,
  Australia's Macquarie has been a big player in the space.
  
  On the real estate side, it has been a constant feature of wealth
  management portfolios, and particularly so among family offices.
  After a slight decline, latest figures from PricewaterhouseCoopers
  showed that in the first half of 2025 brick-and-mortar asset’s
  share of total family office investment was at 39 per cent of the
  total, the highest since the second half of 2019, just prior to
  the pandemic.
  
  New fund
  The new Guinness fund’s portfolio consists of listed
  infrastructure and real estate companies that own and operate
  assets across sectors including utilities, transportation,
  communications, digital infrastructure, data centres and
  healthcare. The fund was launched in early July. 
  The portfolio is roughly 25 per cent closed-ended funds (in the
  form of real estate investment trusts) and 75 per cent
  infrastructure company equity; it uses Guinness’ allocation
  process of around 35 equally-weighted holdings. Other members of
  the responsible investment team working alongside Brennan are
  Francesca Wheble, responsible investment lead, and Eamon
  Devaney-Dykes, responsible investment analyst.
  
  Brennan said he uses standard approaches
  to evaluate underlying investments, such as a business'
  ability to produce steady cashflow, the quality of management,
  and a track record in paying dividends. Besides stock picking, he
  and colleagues apply a top-down approach, looking at trends
  in a sector and the wider economy.
  
  Out of a total real asset/infrastructure universe worth about $5
  trillion, listed companies are filtered for exposure to target
  infrastructure and real estate sectors, and for a minimum market
  cap of $500 million. Further screening for cashflow returns,
  leverage and dividend growth cuts the firms to a universe of 112
  companies. The amount is reduced further after a series of
  decisions; at present, the fund holds 35 companies.
  
  The new fund is benchmarked against the MSCI World Core
  Infrastructure Index. In weightings terms, the Guinness fund is
  slightly underweight US companies on valuation terms, Brennan
  said.
  
  “Utilities is still the biggest allocation,” he said, referring
  to areas such as gas, electricity and other forms of power.
  
  
  
  What sort of risks affect infrastructure?
  “This is always a sector where you need government policies to be
  in your favour,” he said. For example, in Germany the
  government is pushing infrastructure and defence spending,
  responding to US calls on Europe to do more in this area amidst
  the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
  
  Governments also continue to promote energy transition and the
  country-wide power blackouts in Spain in late April highlighted
  power grid vulnerabilities that will need to be fixed, Brennan
  continued.
  
  Electricity power generation is also a growth story when
  considering the demands from areas such as AI and data centres,
  he said. 
  
  Nuclear energy, which has been frowned on politically for years,
  appears to be making a comeback, Brennan said. “Everybody is
  trying to procure and get hold of it,” he said.
  
  
  
  “In the past, when I talked to ethically-focused clients, nuclear
  power would have been a hard exclusion,” Brennan said. 
  
  Health and ageing
  Healthcare-related infrastructure, such as health clinics, GP
  surgeries, hybrid communities for seniors in the US, and other
  areas, are growth topics for the fund.
  
  In the US, for example, “MOBs,” or medical office buildings,
  where hospital facilities are taken off campuses and put into
  communities to be more accessible, is a growth zone. 
  
  The fund only invests in listed companies, and not private market
  firms, Brennan said.