London-based Intermediate Capital Group has added a new member to its European infrastructure team with the appointment of Frank Heiss as a managing director.
Heiss joined the firm from Swiss Life Asset Managers, where he served as executive director of infrastructure investments since 2015. Prior to that, he worked for four years at Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets, where he was responsible for the execution and asset management of European infrastructure investments.
In his new role, he will be responsible for originating mid-market, core-plus infrastructure deals across Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Nordics – regions he focused on while at Swiss Life.
“Specifically, he will be focused on sourcing, analysing and executing transactions for the European infrastructure investment strategy,” ICG said in a statement.
Heiss will be based in Frankfurt, the first member of the infrastructure team to be based outside of Paris, and will report to Guillaume D’Engremont, head of European infrastructure at ICG, a spokeswoman for the firm told Infrastructure Investor.
Heiss’s arrival comes a few months after ICG made its maiden infrastructure deal acquiring a 30 percent stake in Océinde Group, a fibre broadband provider in the French department Réunion Island, which controls a network covering 80 percent of the territory in the Indian Ocean.
This past June, ICG announced it had entered into exclusive negotiations with Paris-based InfraVia Capital Partners to acquire a majority stake in OCEA Smart Building, a French smart water and heat metering company that recently expanded into the rental of electric vehicle charging stations with the acquisition of Bornes Solutions.
The first investment was made through ICG’s balance sheet, D’Engremont told Infrastructure Investor in February. It would then be transferred to ICG’s debut infrastructure fund, which was expected to launch in the second quarter of this year. However, ICG’s spokeswoman declined to comment on fundraising. It is also unclear how the second investment will be financed. Infrastructure Investor understands that it has not yet closed.
Asked whether ICG would be targeting specific sub-sectors in the regions assigned to Heiss, the firm’s spokeswoman said, “As a generalist core-plus infra investor, ICG targets three main segments: energy, transport and telecoms.”
It looks to acquire either majority or minority stakes in mid-market European assets and companies, and is eyeing a double-digit IRR, D’Engremont told Infrastructure Investor in February.
