Macquarie lends £115m to Heathrow

Macquarie has provided £115 million (€153 million; $175 million) in inflation-linked financing to Heathrow Airport.

The debt will take the form of a Class B note that matures in 2036. It is billed by the Australian manager as “one of the first of its kind”, being inflation linked, delayed settlement and at the Class B level. 

The investment will be made by Macquarie Infrastructure Debt Investment Solutions (MIDIS), a platform comprising a pooled fund and separately managed accounts launched by the firm in 2012. MIDIS has now raised total commitments of £979 million from 11 major institutions to invest in UK inflation-linked debt. 

The platform targets investment-grade issuers in sectors including utilities, renewables, transport and social housing. Today’s announcement comes after the firm injected £60 million into a portfolio of seven UK onshore wind farms owned by Swiss-based manager Capital Dynamics last December. 

“[Heathrow] is an established infrastructure issuer with a strong management team operating in a regulated sector. We were able to work quickly with Heathrow on a unique instrument that met their borrowing needs and provided the long-term inflation linked returns our clients require,” said Kit Hamilton, an associate director at MIDIS, in a statement. 

The transaction forms part of a larger debt raising effort by Heathrow, which yesterday successfully placed a €750 million Euro-denominated Class A bond. The company claims the offer was largely oversubscribed, with an order book of over €2.5 billion from more than 200 institutions. 

The bond, which matures in 2030, has a fixed annual coupon of 1.5 percent. Heathrow said it intended to use the proceeds for “general corporate purposes”.