Everything is Infrastructure

Blackstone, Safe Harbor Marinas, and the new asset management gambit

Marinas, apparently foundational to a functioning society

“Marinas benefit from key long-term thematic tailwinds including the growth of travel and leisure as well as population inflows into coastal cities. We believe Safe Harbor is the best positioned company in this sector, and we look forward to working with their terrific team to invest behind their existing marinas and to expand their footprint.” - Heidi Boyd, Senior Managing Director, Blackstone Infrastructure

The asset management industry loves to find an investment theme with an opaque or poorly understood definition and then stuff a bunch of assets it was already pursuing into products that claim to capitalize on the theme.

ESG and “sustainability” funds were a glaring example from the socially piqued days of 2016-2021. A look under the hood revealed that many of those funds held the same mega-cap tech stocks that populated the tops of many non-sustainability-marketed funds. Eventually, the SEC proposed some additional rules around fund names to mitigate investor confusion, but of course, asset managers pushed back, claiming that things like sustainability were uniquely nuanced, perhaps even ineffable.

Source: Morningstar

The Infrastructure Theme

As a thematic investment, infrastructure currently finds itself in the sun of investor attention. Higher rates, a revival of industrial policy, and geopolitical volatility have made the defensive, mission-critical nature of infrastructure assets appealing. Per the Financial Times,

In the first half of 2024, North American infrastructure funds raised a further $10bn, compared with $4bn in the same period last year, according to Preqin data. The third quarter has also started strongly, with almost $7bn raised in July and August so far, compared with just $2.5bn in the same period last year.