Pierfront Capital Fund Management has announced the final close of its second private credit fund, raising investable capital of almost US$700 million.

Investors in the Keppel-Pierfront Private Credit Fund include major institutional investors such as the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, GCM Grosvenor, Manulife and Affin Hwang Asset Management.

The fund provides loans to companies with defensive infrastructure-like business models, across a wide range of real asset sectors in Asia-Pacific, including renewable energy, transportation, telecommunications, logistics, social infrastructure and other core infrastructure.

It has already deployed or made commitments to deploy over 75% of its committed capital across 11 transactions with a strong forward-looking pipeline.

The fund is jointly sponsored by Clifford Capital Holdings, a specialist financing and distribution platform across the debt capital structure for real assets, and Keppel Capital, the asset management arm of Keppel Corporation. Clifford Capital and Keppel Capital each committed US$100 million to the fund.

Pierfront Capital chief executive officer and chief investment officer Stéphane Delatte comments: “We are delighted to have gathered a significant pool of investable capital during an extremely challenging period for fund raising. The top-tier investors we have attracted provide a strong endorsement to the institutional quality of our platform – one that is supported by strategic shareholders with deep expertise in real assets.

“The fact that we have already achieved over 75% deployment speaks to the opportunity set in Asia private credit and the effectiveness of our real asset-focused private credit strategy and team. Performance continues to be robust and underpins the strength of our investment process and the defensive nature of the strategy which is generating attractive risk-adjusted returns.”

Pierfront’s first fund, Pierfront Capital Mezzanine Fund, had committed about US$400 million across 15 investments, achieving close to mid-teens gross internal rate of return as of September 2022.