The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is proposing to be an anchor investor in the ADM Capital Elkhorn Emerging Asia Renewable Energy Fund. The closed-end private credit/debt fund is being set up with a target fund size of US$500 million, with the AIIB coming in with US$100 million.

The fund is being established to help mobilize private institutional capital for providing short, medium and long-term debt financing solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sector in emerging Asia.

ADM Capital was established during the 1998 Asian financial crisis, and initially focused on distressed debt opportunities across the region. As Asian economies rebounded, ADM Capital shifted focus to financing growth, cross-border transactions, acquisitions and special situation opportunities in the region.

Since 2004, when the strategy moved to favour private credit investment, ADM Capital’s Asia funds have invested in 143 Asian private transactions in 16 countries and achieved 112 exits. In 2017, ADM Capital launched the Cibus Fund, a private equity vehicle created to invest in rapidly-growing food chain companies that adopt technologies to enable the profitable and sustainable capture of high-growth market and produce opportunities.

AIIB’s Environmental and Social Policy (ESP) is applicable to the fund investment, if approved. AIIB delegates to the fund manager the decision-making on the use of funds for investments in sub-projects that meet the conditions in the project’s environmental and social documentation, to be agreed with the fund manager in the form of eligibility criteria and investment guidelines.