Listed infrastructure managers have had a more difficult time than their private equity counterparts convincing plan sponsors their strategies are worth a commitment. While listed infrastructure has a lot to offer, many investors are still learning about the strategy and seem to want more information about performance expectations and how the market is defined before committing capital.

All investors want a degree of certainty about how an investment will perform before handing over their capital to a manager, and plan sponsors — stewards of employee retirement assets — tend to want more assurances than most. When investment managers and consultants in the United States proposed infrastructure investment — long-lived assets with consistent stable cash flows — it looked like a perfect fit. Plan sponsors could match these long-term cash flows to their schedule of retirement benefit payouts.

The ramp up, however, has been slower than some anticipated. The recent f