GSFM has partnered with Access Capital Partners (ACP) to distribute its European focused investments. ACP’s European Infrastructure and European Smaller Buy-outs strategies will be available in the Australian market to institutional and wholesale investors and family offices.

ACP was established in 1998 and is an independent private asset manager with offices in Paris, London, Brussels, Munich, Helsinki and Luxembourg that invests in key economies in Western Europe. ACP has €14 billion in assets under management.

GSFM CEO, Damien McIntyre, said the partnership will provide a diversified exposure to European investments.

“GSFM’s strategy is to partner with high calibre investment managers in Australia and overseas, to deliver differentiated, quality investment strategies that are not widely available to investors in the Australian market.”

“The addition of ACP to our existing fund manager line-up means we can offer a new and different asset class of European private assets to investors,” said McIntyre.

Mr McIntyre said ACP’s highly experienced investment team have built a deep knowledge of the European Infrastructure and Smaller Buyout markets over their 25 year history. This heavily influenced GSFM’s decision to partner with the firm.

Mr McIntyre said: “The infrastructure investment strategy is focused on stable brownfield European assets across the energy, renewables, telecommunications, transportation, utilities, and social infrastructure sectors.

The need for this infrastructure is growing at a fast pace, and governments alone cannot fund these projects. Public private partner models (PPP) are a growing trend in this sector. These investments offer attractive risk/return characteristics bolstered by the essential nature of the assets, their ability to generate stable long-term yield and their resilience to changing economic cycles.”

The Smaller Buy-outs strategy, meanwhile, actively invests in the best performing teams managing funds of less than €1 billion in size. It targets sub €100 million enterprise value companies at entry.

Mr McIntyre said: “The Smaller Buy-out strategy offers a combination of primary fund investments, secondary transactions and direct co-investment opportunities through dedicated vehicles and segregated accounts. Key drivers of value are pricing discipline, controlled levels of leverage, combined with turnover and EBITDA growth, achieved organically and/or using a buy-and build model.

This strategy reflects ACP’s investment philosophy that fundamental value creation is a more robust and sustainable source of return, through economic cycles, than sole reliance on financial leverage,” said Mr McIntyre.”

Phillippe Poggioli, Managing Partner of ACP, said: “This partnership was strategically important for the firm as it expands its reach outside of Europe, and delivers the benefits of European asset exposure to Australian investors.

GSFM is a well established brand, with a high calibre team and a strong track record in distribution in Australia, and it was an easy decision to partner with them.”

“We are looking forward to working with the GSFM team as we bring our European focused investments to Australian institutional and wholesale investors and family offices,” added Mr Poggioli.