Exclusive: Macquarie eyes $2 billion North American infrastructure fund: sources

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Australia's Macquarie Group Ltd , the world's largest manager of infrastructure assets, is preparing to raise a $2 billion infrastructure fund in 2012, its third focused on the United States and Canada, people familiar with the matter said.

Macquarie, which has averaged gross internal rates of return of more than 20 percent in its North American infrastructure investments, is planning to start fundraising this year, as its second $1.6 billion North American infrastructure fund was fully invested, the people said.

Macquarie declined to comment.

Typically seen as a champion of private investment, the United States lags behind Europe and Australia in the privatization of infrastructure such as roads, tunnels and bridges, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which in a September report called the U.S. infrastructure market "immature."

Political bickering at state and local levels, multilayered planning bureaucracy, opposition by labor unions and consumer groups to privatization, and a competitive municipal bond market have historically conspired to limit the role of direct private investments in U.S. infrastructure.

Macquarie is betting on a vibrant market for privatized infrastructure assets set to change hands. Of the major U.S. infrastructure deals completed in 2010 and 2011, 64 percent were transactions in the secondary market, according a February report by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

To be sure, Macquarie has also proved successful in bidding for the few new assets on the market. It was behind the largest U.S. infrastructure deals of the last two years -- a $2.1 billion project to build and operate commuter rail lines to Denver International Airport and a $1.7 billion upgrade of a tunnel between the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth in Virginia.

Macquarie's competitors include infrastructure funds sponsored by other banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs Group Inc , private equity firms such as Carlyle Group LP and KKR & Co LP , and independent managers such as Global Infrastructure Partners and Alinda Capital Partners LLC. Although those investment firms also do U.S. infrastructure deals, none of them do so with a dedicated fund.

Infrastructure funds -- private equity-type vehicles investing in infrastructure assets -- raised an aggregate $16 billion in 2011, down 49 percent from 2010, according to market research firm Preqin.

In 2011, Macquarie raised $4 billion for its infrastructure and real estate funds globally. It had $317 billion in assets under management as the end of September.

(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Lisa Von Ahn)