Water Investment Management

Signina has a long standing experience in the European water sector. Its principals have done their first investment in the water space in 1999, due to a tailored family office request. While first the emphases has been on utility based investments, water technology became a significant part of the water advisory business. Due to lack of reforms in the water sector and the limited availability, Signina’s views were mainly expressed via equities. While this has changed in the last five years, mezzanine and project finance deals in developed countries became more and more important. In 2011 Signina sees infrastructure as the best opportunity in the water sector with desalination, sewage management and water providers offering an attractive risk/reward return. Since 1999 the advised parties and Signina have invested successfully over USD 1bn worth of assets in this sector.

Historically we have started to invest via Pictet and SAM as they were the only ones available for liquid deals and they had a clear utility and technology biased from 1999 until 2002. Later we added Summit Water from San Diego, which is in the market for about 30 years and nowadays is an important part of our deal flow. At the same time we have built our expertise together with Ecofin, a utility team in London, hence we see our core investment expertise on the English water market, which is widely recognised as the most advanced and regulated water market in the world.

We also have close ties with the OECD on the water topic as such and one of our external analysts advises the UN on global strategy for water as well.

We were very early investors in Modern Water and also accompanied E-pure in Singapore. We also held about 4% of Guangdong Investments, that provides water to the HongKong-Island. In England we have been involved in privatisations of Kelda and held significant parts of Northumbrian water, Pennon and United Utilities. Therefore we still have the regulatory contacts and access to all the analysts covering that space.