US$2 Billion John Hancock Infrastructure Fund Closes

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Jul 02, 2018, 09:00 ET

TORONTO, July 2, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Manulife today announced the closing of approximately US$2 billion in capital commitments to the John Hancock Infrastructure Fund.

The Fund provides third party investors the opportunity to invest alongside Manulife's General Account in direct private equity investments and co-investments in the infrastructure sector in the United States. The company operates primarily as John Hancock in the United States and Manulife elsewhere.

The Fund's infrastructure equity investing strategy builds on John Hancock's more than 15-year track record in this space. The infrastructure investment team works with world-class infrastructure operators that are looking for a knowledgeable and experienced capital partner.

"We were able to bring this new fund to investors by leveraging our private markets platform paired with our infrastructure team's extensive experience and strong reputation," said Kevin Adolphe, President and CEO of Manulife Asset Management Private Markets. "This enabled us to quickly secure a strong syndicate of investors and an oversubscribed offering."

The Fund attracted prominent institutional investors with approximately 45% from North America, 40% from Europe and 15% from Asia. Nearly half of the Fund was raised from pension funds and insurance companies, and the remaining commitments primarily from global asset managers with select sovereign wealth funds.

The Fund is led by John Anderson, Manulife's Head of Corporate Finance, and Recep Kendircioglu, Senior Managing Director, Power and Infrastructure. The Fund was partially seeded by the Company and it has agreed to maintain a 40 percent ownership of certain of the assets and 50 percent ownership of the balance of the assets. In addition, the Company will match the Fund's new primary investments on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

"We have a deep network with long-standing relationships that enables our team to see an exceptionally wide range of opportunities and source deals from leading infrastructure operators," Mr Kendircioglu said.

He added that the Funds' investments will be broadly focused on regulated utilities (electricity transmission and distribution, gas distribution, water and wastewater); contracted energy assets (wind, solar, hydro, natural-gas fired, pipelines and storage); transportation (toll roads, bridges, tunnels, parking facilities, ports, airports, and rail), telecommunications and other infrastructure assets.

Campbell Lutyens acted as the exclusive financial advisor to the Fund.

About Manulife
Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services group that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better. We operate primarily as John Hancock in the United States and Manulife elsewhere. We provide financial advice, insurance, as well as wealth and asset management solutions for individuals, groups and institutions. At the end of 2017, we had about 35,000 employees, 73,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving more than 26 million customers. As of March 31, 2018, we had over $1.1 trillion (US$850 billion) in assets under management and administration, and in the previous 12 months we made $26.9 billion in payments to our customers. Our principal operations are in Asia, Canada and the United States where we have served customers for more than 100 years. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we trade as 'MFC' on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges and under '945' in Hong Kong.