“We know there is appetite for African infrastructure as an asset class from institutional investors – our partnership with [German financial services company] Allianz back in 2018 and its investment in our fund was testament to this,” says Martijn Proos, director at Ninety One, the global asset manager that manages the fund. The EAIF is a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company.
“But to expand our investor base, we need to make investing in the fund […] easier. A rating from an external agency helps us to achieve that,” he says. “And since the rating was announced, the interest has been phenomenal.”
Even though credit ratings from external agencies are not a necessary requirement for all investors, they do convey the risk associated with investing in a specific company or fund. As such, many investors are mandated to allocate to ‘credit worthy’ or ‘investment grade’
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