Everything else on this platform prices the asset and the deal. This page prices the vehicle that owns them: commitments drawn over an investment period, management fees, and a distribution waterfall, return of capital, preferred return, catch-up, carry, that turns a gross deal return into the net return an LP actually receives.
A fund that underwrites deals at a 12% gross IRR does not deliver 12% to its investors. Fees are charged on committed capital before most of it is even deployed, carry takes a fifth of the profits, and the drawdown J-curve means capital is out the door years before it comes back. The spread between gross and net, typically 3–4 points of IRR and 0.2–0.4× of MOIC for a value-add infrastructure fund, is the price of the platform. This model makes that spread visible, and shows the two levers LPs use to compress it: terms and co-investment.
Every distribution first repays what LPs have funded, deal cost, fees and expenses. Until contributions are fully returned, nobody is in the profit column.
LPs then receive the hurdle, typically 7–8% compounded on capital outstanding. The GP earns nothing above its own commitment until the pref is cleared.
With the pref paid, the GP typically takes 100% of the next distributions until it holds its carry percentage of all profits paid so far, "catching up" on the pref it skipped.
Everything after that splits, typically 80/20. In this model the waterfall is European (whole-of-fund): carry is only reached once the entire fund's capital and pref are back.
The main variant is the American (deal-by-deal) waterfall, where carry is paid on each realised deal against that deal's capital, with a clawback if later deals disappoint. It pays the GP earlier, which is why LPs negotiated the European structure into most infrastructure funds. The second big lever is co-investment: LPs taking a slice of a deal alongside the fund at reduced or no fee and carry. Set the co-invest share above and watch the blended net return move toward gross, this is exactly why large LPs prize co-invest allocations, and why the biggest have gone further and built direct programmes.
| Vehicle | Management fee | Carry / hurdle | Life | What it owns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core open-ended | 0.5–0.9% on NAV | Often none, or low carry over a cash-yield hurdle | Perpetual, with redemption windows | De-risked, yielding assets, regulated networks, contracted power, mature PPPs |
| Core-plus / value-add closed-ended | 1.25–1.5% committed, stepping to invested | 15–20% over 7–8% | 10–12 years + extensions | Platforms with a build or fix, fibre, storage, airports out of a downturn |
| Opportunistic / infra PE | 1.5–1.75% | 20% over 8% | 10 years | Development, emerging markets, corporate carve-outs with complexity |
| Infrastructure debt | 0.5–1.0% | 0–10% over a cash hurdle | 7–10 years or open-ended | Senior or mezzanine loans against the same assets |
| Co-investment sleeve | 0–0.5% | 0–10% | Deal-matched | A pro-rata slice of a specific fund deal, the gross-to-net compressor |
Illustrative model. Deals deploy in equal tranches across the investment period, pay the cash yield on cost while held, and exit at the multiple after the hold. Fees are drawn from commitments (so deployable capital is solved net of lifetime fees), the waterfall is European with a 100% catch-up, and the pref compounds annually on capital outstanding. Real funds differ, fee offsets, GP commitment, recycling, subscription-line timing (which flatters early net IRR), and organisation-cost caps are all negotiated. Figures are generic $m, not a forecast of any fund, and nothing here is investment advice.