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.