How Eiffel pioneered mid-market infrastructure Evergreen Fund

Behind the scenes of Eiffel's evergreen infrastructure fund, that won them the accolade of Best Mid-Market Pioneer award at the IPEM Wealth Awards. 

With a flair for innovation and a commitment to delivering the best investment outcomes for its clients, Paris-headquartered Eiffel Investment Group first explored designing semi-liquid solutions in 2019.

The independent asset manager, which currently manages approximately EUR7 billion, received a special request from one of its longstanding clients, MAIF, a French insurance group, to provide them with a dedicated retail fund. 

“They wanted it to invest into renewable energy and energy transition infrastructure so we designed our first infrastructure debt evergreen fund for them in 2021. It took us two years to engineer the solution,” explains Eiffel’s Managing Director, Laura Carrère.

That Eiffel is backed by entrepreneur Jacques Veyrat’s Impala group means that it embraces industrial expertise to foster long-term growth in the companies it finances across four key strategies: private debt, private equity, energy transition infrastructures and listed equities and credit.  

Eiffel has just passed the EUR500m mark for its evergreen infrastructure debt funds.

The infrastructure debt fund it designed was one of the first of its kind to launch in France. The ability to provide a low volatility profile with steady, predictable income, as well as enable individual investors to contribute to Europe’s energy sovereignty in an accessible way, made this first semi-liquid product an ideal choice. Over the last twelve months, for example, the evergreen fund managed by Eiffel for MAIF (MAIF Rendement Vert) has generated approximately 9 to 10% net returns (excluding insurance contract fees).(net performance as of 2nd of May 2025).

Such was the success of this first client-led mandate that in 2021 it led Eiffel to develop a similar product for Allianz, called “Allianz Transition Energétique”.  

Having designed two evergreens for its clients, by 2022 it was time for Eiffel to launch its own vehicle: Eiffel Infrastructures Vertes (French for Eiffel Green Infrastructure), which is sold to a broad network of insurance companies and private banks. 

“We now have the ELTIF approval from the French regulator,” says Carrère. “We are starting selling it in Luxembourg, Belgium with plans to sell it in Italy, Germany and so on. It's an Article 9 evergreen product, and has the ‘GreenFin’ label.” GreenFin is a French initiative that recognises financial investments that directly support the energy and ecological transition.

Eiffel also has two private debt evergreens in its stable, which recently obtained regulatory approval.

Laura and the leadership team headed up by CEO and co-founder, Fabrice Dumonteil, soon recognised in 2021 that private debt products (both infrastructure and corporate) could be well adapted for retirement plans, giving retirees yielding options. The dynamics of investing in French life insurance contracts were also revealing. 

“If you invest in French life insurance contracts, you can either buy Euro Funds, which typically generate between 1% and 3% return per annum , or choose to invest directly into unit-linked funds. At that time, there was a clear trend that Euro Funds were not that appealing because the rates were so low. That's what drove us to access this market. 

“We have a very strong franchise in private debt. We think it's going to be a big driver for growth. We have experienced strong growth in our retail franchise but it's still quite small compared to the total AUM we manage. Our retail AUM is just south of EUR1 billion,” says Carrère. 

The life insurance industry in France alone is approximately EUR1.9 trillion. Even a 1% increase to private markets would represent a significant market opportunity for asset managers, on a go forward basis. 

To successfully operate private market evergreens, the Eiffel team focused carefully on enhancing its valuation management and reporting capabilities to handle regular subscriptions and redemptions. Still, the fact that it has been managing small and mid-cap listed equity funds  and listed credit funds for over 15 years meant that Eiffel didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Thus, it had solid foundations in place to handle the unique challenge of managing semi-liquids. 

Eiffel has just passed the EUR500m mark for its evergreen infrastructure debt funds.

“Winning the inaugural IPEM award for Best Mid-Market Pioneer was a real honour because of the strength of the IPEM brand. The award sits in the middle of our biggest meeting room and it's something that every client comments on when they visit our office,” concludes Carrère.