Tag Archives: fund
Green Fund Aims To Harvest Greenbacks
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9ec02f2-d43e-11e2-a464-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2X2FIgnpQ By Ellen Kelleher The first agroforestry investment vehicle of its kind is to be listed in Luxembourg within weeks. Moringa, a Sicar co-sponsored by ONF International, the environmental consultants, and La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild, will become the first listed investment vehicle to offer the chance to invest in a combination of agricultural and forestry projects across Africa and Latin America. As much as €50m has been raised already for the venture capital investment vehicle, which is looking to cap its fundraising at €120m. The fund’s aim is to crack down on deforestation and promote the development of sustainable land use across sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America while also turning a profit. Investment schemes range from planting 6,500 hectares of cashew trees in Madagascar to the repurposing of 12,500 hectares of unproductive savannah in the Democratic Republic of Congo to produce charcoal. “The fund is very different because you are going to manage your forest, but at the same time you will grow some agricultural products,” says Hugo Ferreira, deputy general manager with La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild. “That gives you a diversified income stream during the life of the fund.” Officials in the ONFI’s field offices in Cameroon, Gabon, Brazil and Colombia will assist in finding worthy projects to invest in. The fund’s duration will be 12 years as a minimum. Investments will be made in the first five years and a lengthy holding period will follow. A typical pure-play timber fund, by comparison, has a longer duration of 15 to 18 years. Management fees will be 2 per cent per year and the managers will also take 20 per cent of the capital gain after a hurdle rate of 7 per cent. Continue reading
China Fund To Invest In US Property
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9eefff48-d8bc-11e2-84fa-00144feab7de.html#ixzz2WqixgTWA By Simon Rabinovitch in Shanghai 19/06/13 A top Chinese fund manager will launch the country’s first fund tracking a US real estate index to cater to Chinese investors who think the US property market will outperform their own. GF Fund Management, China’s sixth-biggest fund company by assets under management, said it would next month offer a fund that aims to match the performance of the MSCI US real estate investment trust index. US property has in recent years become a top investment choice for wealthy Chinese. Real estate developers from China have also started looking to the US, making several big acquisitions this year. But for smaller Chinese investors, options have been more limited. GF Fund said its new product, which will be available in units as small as Rmb1,000 ($163), would bring US property to a much wider Chinese investor base. “Ordinary Chinese people can see that US real estate has more investment potential than Chinese real estate,” said David Qiu, global investment portfolio manager for GF Fund. “The US economy and property are still recovering,” he said. “Relatively speaking, Chinese property is more of a bubble.” Regulations in China still bar the trading of real estate investment trusts, so the fund will track the MSCI index rather than actually function like a reit. GF Fund did not say how much money it was hoping to raise. The fund will be available in China as part of the country’s qualified domestic institutional investor programme, which grants quotas to Chinese investors to legally get around the country’s capital controls. QDII products have suffered from a lack of demand in the past because many were launched before the global financial crisis and their subsequent plunge damaged their reputation for Chinese investors. But over the past three years, overseas markets have outperformed Chinese markets by a big margin and QDII offerings have started to pick up. Lion Fund Management in 2011 launched China’s first fund for investing in global Reits. Penghua Fund, another leading Chinese money manager, launched a US real estate fund in late 2011 that invests in specific stocks. The Penghua Fund product has gained nearly 11 per cent since its inception. During that same time, the Shanghai Composite index, China’s main stock index, has fallen more than 10 per cent. Mr Qiu said GF Fund would look at launching similar Reit-backed products for Europe if the US fund is successful. The fund launches at a tricky time for the sector globally. Reits and other income-paying equity products enjoyed a stellar run over the past 18 months as international investors sought out higher yields. But since the Federal Reserve raised the prospect of a tapering of its asset purchases in May, yield and dividend-paying stocks have suffered a reversal of fortunes. The global Dow Jones Reit index has fallen 10 per cent in the past month, while in Hong Kong at least one sizeable new listing has been pulled. However, according to bankers, many Asian investors have turned their attention to the US housing market instead, targeting listed homebuilders and property-related exchange traded funds. Despite obstacles to getting money out of their country, Chinese nationals are already the second-biggest foreign buyers of US property, after Canadians. Chinese accounted for 11 per cent of foreign purchases of US property last year, up from 5 per cent in 2007, according to the US national association of realtors. Additional reporting by Josh Noble in Hong Kong Continue reading
EIB Supports Althelia Climate Fund To Save Tropical Forests
The European Investment Bank has agreed to contribute up to EUR 25m for the Althelia Climate Fund launched this week. The Althelia Climate Fund is a public-private partnership that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with a focus on sustainable land use, ecosystem services and forest carbon. Althelia Ecosphere is an innovative fund which will develop multiple revenue streams from forest protection and sustainable land use. It aims to demonstrate that financial performance can be fully aligned with sound environmental stewardship and social development. The fund will generate returns in two ways. Firstly, by investing in forest carbon and other socially and environmentally-orientated tradable carbon assets the fund can generate an income stream from standing forests. Secondly the fund will increase the volume and quality of a range of sustainably produced, certified agricultural commodities. Althelia will invest in projects around the world, with a strong focus on Africa and Latin America. The fund’s strategy is to align the interests of the local communities and the fund. Jonathan Taylor, European Investment Bank Vice-President responsible for environment projects highlighted that: “The EIB is pleased to support the Althelia Climate Fund. Innovative investments of this sort will help to tackle deforestation and promote sustainable land use. This is a good example of our support for projects which will also have a positive social impact. Applying good environmental and social standards remains central to our work in all areas”. Philippe de Fontaine Vive, European Investment Bank Vice-President in charge of new product development and innovation said: “Innovation is indispensable for financing key sectors like climate change and the protection of biodiversity while taking account of food security. The European Investment Bank is very glad to support the Althelia Climate Fund which is based on performance-based payment for ecosystem services. These innovative financial instruments, especially the REDD+ mechanism, need to be deployed at large scale.” The Althelia Fund is the Bank’s first operation to support REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), an important market-based instrument to protect standing forests and mitigate this important source of emissions. REDD+ credits give a financial value to the carbon stored in standing forests, generating a financial incentive to protect them, while compensating forest landholders for the opportunity cost lost to conserve their land. This represents a potentially powerful mechanism for biodiversity conservation and a mechanism for Althelia will invest in forest protection and sustainable land use around the world, with a strong focus on Africa and Latin America, generating revenues from carbon credits, production of certified agricultural commodities and other activities in particular REDD+ tropical forest conservation activities that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by avoiding deforestation and forest degradation, protecting and enhancing forest carbon stocks. A portion of the Fund’s carbon credits corresponding to the EIB investment will be sold to companies to facilitate corporate social and environmental responsibility objectives. Sylvain Goupille, Managing Director of Althelia Climate Fund GP said: “The European Investment Bank deeply understands the need for simultaneously addressing natural capital preservation and economic development. Its commitment to the Althelia Climate Fund has been instrumental for the successful launch of this innovative public-private partnership that aims to deploy performance-based payment for ecosystem services in developing countries at scale” All projects supported by the fund must demonstrate consent of the communities involved and have ensured meaningful dialogue, consultation and participation with stakeholders, verified by the application of the EIB Social Assessment Guidance Notes, as well as meeting the REDD+ Social and Environmental Standards. Projects must also comply with IFC Performance Standards (2012), meet Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCB) certification standards. Background: Tropical forests are disappearing at a rate of about 13 million hectares per year. This has an impact not only at local level, but also globally: tropical forests are home to much of the planet’s biodiversity, and are major repositories of carbon. Deforestation, forest degradation and related land use change is responsible for 15-20% of global CO2 emissions. Meeting the EU’s objective of limiting climate change to 2°C above pre-industrial levels will require a cut of global emissions by at least 50% below 1990 levels by 2050. Such a reduction is impossible without substantial action to combat deforestation. Recognising the importance of biodiversity, the United Nations has declared 2011 to 2020 the Decade of Biodiversity to underline the role of biodiversity and ecosystems in providing essential life support systems. The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon, and instruments to protect them, including forest-based carbon credits, have a potentially powerful role to play in the safeguarding of global biodiversity, as well in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Press contact: Richard Willis, +352 621 555 758, willis@eib.org Website: www.eib.org/press – Press Office: +352 4379 21000 – press@eib.org 13 June 2013 Continue reading
