France’s ERAFP launches long-term €350m private equity and infra tenders

French civil service pension fund, ERAFP, the 100% socially responsible investor with more than €23bn in assets, has launched two long-term, SRI-focused tenders collectively worth €350m for private equity and infrastructure.

The mandates could stretch out to 14 years. Each mandate must comply with ERAFP’s SRI approach and their initial terms will be 10 years, which ERAFP has the option of extending by two successive periods of two years each.

The private equity mandate, worth €200m, will support the growth, expansion and business transmission projects of unlisted European SMEs and mid-tier companies. The infrastructure mandate, worth €150m, instructs fund or refunding infrastructure projects through equity, quasi-equity and debt in OECD countries.

The assets targeted by ERAFP investments could form part of public private partnerships, privatization of stateassets or reduction of private companies’ commitments in infrastructure assets. The deadline for responses to the tenders is March 6.

ERAFP is one of the world’s largest public pension funds in terms of member numbers, with over 4.5 million beneficiaries, 45,000 employers and nearly €1.8bn in annual contributions, making it one of the fastest growing institutional asset pots in the world, all of which is outsourced to third party managers.

The Paris-based fund is the French Public Service Additional Pension Scheme.

In October, it announced a pioneering experiment inviting asset managers to compete for a dummy mandate to test whether they can run a portfolio of international equities with a low carbon footprint.

And, late last year, in association with ShareAction, ERAFP launched the RE100 initiative for companies to change over to 100% renewable energy within as short a timeframe as possible.