We provide indexes, research and data on privately held infrastructure and debt to the global investment community. Because the majority of global infrastructure assets are not publicly traded, there has traditionally been a vast knowledge gap when it comes to gauging the prices of these assets and their evolution. We are closing that gap with calculated indexes that already cover 25 countries representing an investable universe of 5,500 companies.

We are first and foremost an infrastructure index data and analytics provider. You can access our data by purchasing an index licence just as you would with any other index provider.

You can also have us make a customised solutions including custom benchmarks that match your portfolio exposures to various TICCS® segments of the market.

In addition, we provide other related services such as asset valuation. You might for example ask us to apply our methodology and modelling to private assets that you have in your portfolio.

Our customers are organisations within the asset management industry that invest in infrastructure – or who plan to. We serve three types of key customers: asset owners, asset managers and investment consultants.

Asset owners

The world’s pension funds, insurance companies and Sovereign wealth funds hold the savings of the world. We help them understand what infrastructure investment can do for them. Should a Californian pension plan, for example, invest 5%, 10% or even 15% of its capital in infrastructure assets? We can help answer these kinds of strategy questions. Asset Owners also need to assess their performance, especially how much risk they are taking if assets are valued on fair value (IFRS 13) basis.

Asset managers

Asset managers need to have a basis for comparison to demonstrate how they are performing and how much of their good (or bad) performance is due to their skills or to the market: we can give them a market benchmark for assets that are not publicly traded and are very illiquid on the surface. Market benchmarks also make useful marketing tools for fund-raising especially to demonstrate the appeal of different strategies.

Consultants advise on the use of benchmarks and which strategies fit investors' better, they need objective and reliable information about performance and risk.

As part of its commitment to making the region a trailblazer in the field of financial research and education, in 2010 the Singapore Government Authorities invited EDHEC Business School to establish a campus in the heart of the city’s new cluster of excellence. Subsequently, in 2011 the Monetary Authority of Singapore sponsored the EDHEC-Risk Institute to set up a five-year research project with the remit to focus on long-term investment and economic development policies. The Infrastructure research program at EDHEC was launched in 2012.

Our CEO Frédéric Blanc-Brude first joined EDHEC-Risk Institute Asia 2012 to kick start the research on infrastructure investment. He was able to bring a decade of experience in the field of private sector infrastructure finance to the team, along with direct involvement in more than USD6bn of transactions. From day one, he was keen to explore the real-world implementation of infrastructure research developments.

In 2012, EDHECinfra took the step of establishing its first research chair, demonstrating our commitment to building business expertise on a bedrock of solid scientific research. Natixis endowed the EDHEC/Natixis Research Chair, with a remit to focus on the definition, nature and risk-adjusted performance measurement of private infrastructure debt, in particular project financing debt. Natixis has subsequently renewed its sponsorship of the chair twice, a decade of supporting research at EDHEC.

These two key sponsors endowed the EDHEC/Meridiam/Campbell-Lutyens Research Chair on Unlisted Infrastructure Equity in 2013. The chair’s purpose is to focus on the development of better definitions and valuation approaches to unlisted infrastructure investments.

Based on our reputation for infrastructure research, MAS agreed to provide a five-year grant for the creation of a dedicated research centre on infrastructure at EDHEC. The objective of the grant was to support a program of data collection on unlisted infrastructure investment as well as the development of a dedicated asset pricing and risk measurement technology for the benchmarking of unlisted infrastructure investments (debt and equity). Frédéric Blanc-Brude was finally able to put together a dedicated team of infrastructure researchers.

Since 2016, GIH - a G20 initiative - has supported EDHECinfra's annual survey of infrastructure investors, which has grown to be the largest and most representative survey of investor's views and preferences for the infrastructure asset class.

Our sponsor the Long-Term Infrastructure Investor Association made the decision in 2016 to endow a three-year Research Chair at EDHECinfra. Its goal is to develop new research on issues central to the development of infrastructure as an asset class. These include performance benchmarking and the relationship with environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects of infrastructure companies.

In a milestone event for our researchers, EDHECinfra published its nascent indices in June 2017. They were a far cry from today’s more sophisticated descendants, being only calculated annually and covering just the UK and Europe. However, they marked a sea change for the industry, which until then had been reliant on listed indices, or indices constructed of appraisal-based valuations – neither of which provided a good benchmark to asset managers.

It took many months to transform our research into industry standard software and to broaden the data we were collecting to capture a global industry and decades of historical prices, but with a dedicated team, we managed it.

EDHECinfra Days is a two-day conference offering asset managers the latest empirical research on the infrastructure asset class. Launched in 2018, it brings a combination of advanced research and quantitative techniques to the world of private, illiquid infrastructure investment.

Private infrastructure investment is developing rapidly as a global asset class. This evolution requires a clear and robust classification of the individual infrastructure companies that equity investors can acquire or debt investors lend to.We launched The Infrastructure Company Classification Standard (TICCS) in October 2018 by EDHECinfra to provide investors with a frame of reference to approach the infrastructure asset class.

EDHECinfra was able to bring a representative index of investible infrastructure in 25 countries to the market in June 2019. Based on in-depth market research, the universe used to compute the EDHECinfra indices aims to capture 50% of the investible market over time in those countries that exhibit at least 20% of secondary/primary market activity, ensuring the representative constituents and discount rates.