In an article published in Financial Investigator on 3 September, 2024, Frédéric Blanc-Brude, Director, Abhishek Gupta, Associate Director, and Moataz Farid, Quantitative Analyst, at EDHEC Infrastructure & Private Assets Research Institute, discuss a “Smart Infra” approach to infrastructure portfolio construction. The article explains how unlisted infrastructure investments can be diversified despite their illiquid nature by focusing on key systematic risk factors, rather than simply increasing the number of assets. Such “High Factor Intensity” portfolios achieve higher risk-adjusted returns with fewer assets. The approach helps insitutional investors enhance portfolio performance by targeting specific risk factors, and can also be applied to other illiquid assets such as infrastructure debt, real estate and private equity.

Read the full article here.

The corresponding research publication, “Achieving Diversification in Unlisted Infrastructure Investment”, is available here.