COPENHAGEN – A.P. Moller Holding, which controls Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, said Wednesday it has launched a new fund that will invest in infrastructure in Africa.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The fund, which was launched with pension funds PKA, PensionDanmark and Medical Doctors’ Pension Fund, has received commitments of $550 million and aims to raise $1 billion.
The fund will be managed by former Maersk management members Kim Fejfer, Lars Reno Jakobsen and Joe Nicklaus Nielsen, as well as Jens Thomassen, who is joining from Denham Capital.
In a statement accompanying the fund launch this morning, Uggla said: “Africa, with a working-age population likely to reach more than one billion people in the next decades, has a pressing requirement for more investments in infrastructure.”
The new fund will focus on investments in Africa’s transport and energy infrastructure. It is run by a team led by Kim Fejfer, the former chief executive of Maersk’s container-terminals division, APM Terminals.
Peter Damgaard Jensen, the chief executive at PKA, said that his organisation has had “positive experiences investing in Africa, and we have for a long time wanted to invest more on the continent”.
Torben Möger Pedersen, the chief executive of PensionDanmark, said AP Møller had “extensive investment experience” and “a promising pipeline of potential investment projects”.
Jensen and Pedersen added that the fact that Africa investment was “in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals” was a further draw.
“We are delighted to have established a new promising company in our portfolio with a strong team, who hold the right capabilities and experience to manage infrastructure investments in emerging markets,” said A.P. Moller Holding Chief Executive Robert Maersk Uggla.
A.P. Moller Holding is a wholly-owned fund established in 1953 by the founder of A.P. Moller Maersk with approximately $20 billion under management. The holding company owns 41.5 percent of shares and 51 percent of voting rights in the listed Maersk company.
Fejfer used to run the company’s APM Terminals division which manages ports around the world and has invested in ports in sub-Saharan countries such as Nigeria and Ghana.