Managers are ranked on the return they add above the market — measured fund by fund and aggregated to the manager. Every fund is scored on Pure Alpha, the annualised return it delivered above a benchmark matched to its own declared strategy, and a manager's rank is the realisation-weighted average of the Pure Alpha of its qualifying funds — so the rank rests on capital the manager actually returned, not on paper marks.
The Metric
An IRR tells an investor what a fund returned. It does not say how much of that came from the market and how much the manager added — a fund that returned 14% while its market returned 14% added nothing, while a fund that returned 9% while its market returned 4% added a great deal. Direct Alpha separates the two.
Because every cash flow is compared with the market over its own life, an old vintage fund is not judged against today's market. Because Direct Alpha is an annualised rate rather than a multiple, a mature fund and a younger one sit on the same scale.
| Measure | What it captures | Why it is published |
|---|---|---|
| Total Alpha | Return above the whole infrastructure market, measured against the infra300® index. | One regulated, widely used index, so the figure is easy to place and to check. |
| Pure Alpha | Return above a benchmark matched to the fund's own strategy, sector and region. | The ranked metric. It reflects selection, timing, structuring and value creation with strategy held constant, which is what makes managers running different mandates comparable. |
| Allocation Alpha | Total Alpha less Pure Alpha. | Shows what the strategy and sector tilt contributed, so the decomposition reconciles in full and a manager who tilts well can point to it. |
Pure Alpha is ranked because it measures a manager against the strategy it said it would run. A lower-risk mandate is not penalised by a benchmark drawn wider than the fund, and a higher-risk mandate earns no credit for the risk premium alone. Total Alpha is published in the same row for readers who prefer it.
Eligibility — Funds
Eligibility rules are set before any alpha is computed and applied uniformly. In scope are closed-end primary private infrastructure equity funds, globally, reporting in a supported index currency.
| Criterion | Requirement | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Asset class | Closed-end primary infrastructure equity funds. Debt, secondaries, funds of funds, co-investment vehicles, separate accounts, listed vehicles and open-end or evergreen funds are out of scope. | Direct Alpha needs a bounded cash-flow series with a terminal value, and each of these carries a different fee or entry basis, so alpha would not be comparable. Evergreen vehicles are on the roadmap for a later edition. |
| Vintage maturity | A known vintage year, with the two most recent vintage years excluded. | Alpha in a fund's first years reflects J-curve effects and appraisal-driven NAVs rather than skill. The rule applies to strong and weak young funds alike. |
| Complete cash flow data | A complete dated series of contributions and distributions from the first capital call, beginning within two years of the fund's vintage. Series with gaps, or an uncertain start date, are excluded rather than estimated. | Alpha is calculated since inception, so a series that starts late or has holes in it produces a figure that looks precise and is not. Nothing is interpolated or back-filled to make a fund eligible. |
| Benchmarkable mandate | Declared mandate mappable to TICCS® at enough granularity for a strategy benchmark to be resolved. | Without a matched benchmark a fund can carry a Total Alpha but not a Pure Alpha, and Pure Alpha is the ranked metric. |
Where the fund cash flows come from
| Source | How it is used | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Manager-contributed cash flows | Primary source. Dated contributions and distributions, net of fees, with the latest reported NAV as terminal value. | The manager holds the definitive record of its own fund, and contributing it is the manager's opportunity to have the ranking calculated on accurate numbers and strategy. |
| LP-reported net cash flows | Secondary source, used where manager data is absent. | Contributions made and distributions received by an investor are an arm's-length record of the same events. |
| Commercial databases | Not used. | Coverage is incomplete and cannot be verified against either the manager or the investor, so those series do not enter. |
Two series are never blended into a composite, because the result is a track record that neither the manager nor the investor recognises. Where several investor series exist for the same fund, the one with the longest history is used, with no averaging. Cash flows are net of fees as reported.
Eligibility — Managers
A manager needs enough of a track record, spread across market conditions, to make a rank meaningful rather than a single lucky or unlucky outcome.
| Criterion | Requirement | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible funds | Three or more funds clearing the fund-level rules. | Three is the point at which no single fund can determine a rank, and at which a repeated pattern can be told apart from one outcome. Two funds cannot do either. |
| Vintage diversity | Funds spanning two or more distinct vintage years. | Stops a record built in one favourable market moment from reading as a durable one. |
| Recency | At least one vintage in the last ten years. | Keeps the ranking to active franchises rather than historical ones. |
The Aggregation
A manager's ranked alpha is the realisation-weighted average of the Pure Alpha of its qualifying funds, in three steps.
Funds from the two most recent vintage years are dropped entirely, as at the fund level. Their alpha is dominated by early fees, assets still held near cost and an absence of realisations. Excluding them keeps implausible early marks, in either direction, from moving a manager's rank.
Each qualifying fund is weighted by its DPI/TVPI — distributions divided by total value. The ratio sits between 0 and 1 by construction, so no cap is required. It measures how much of a fund's result has been settled in cash rather than held as an appraisal, so the weight ties each fund's influence to how final its alpha is. The weight is a measure of confidence in the number, not of performance: a fund can carry full weight on a poor result as easily as on a good one.
Manager alpha = Σ ( wi · αi ) / Σ wi
Where αi is fund i's Pure Alpha and wi is its realised share of total value. Managers are ranked on that figure, high to low.
Alpha Persistence
Persistence is the probability that a manager's next fund delivers positive Pure Alpha. It is estimated by updating a starting assumption of even odds with each observed positive or negative fund — how a hit rate is read sensibly from a small number of funds. It is published in the same row as the rank and does not enter the ranking calculation.
It answers a different question from the rank. Two managers can both average +6% Pure Alpha: one delivered it across four funds out of four, the other delivered it in one fund out of four while three sat flat. The rank measures how much alpha a manager produced; persistence measures how often. Folding both into a single figure would mean a manager's position could fall while every one of its funds improved, and nobody could say which input moved it.
Positive alpha and high persistence — the record is both strong and repeatable.
Positive alpha but low persistence — a strong average built on an inconsistent hit rate.
Negative alpha but high persistence — a consistent hit rate that has not yet translated into a positive average.
Negative alpha and low persistence — neither the average nor the hit rate support the record.
Notes and Governance
The published edition is annual and carries its calculation date. Platform tables refresh quarterly as indices reprice and fund data updates, so a platform figure can differ from the published edition.
The infrastructure ranking is reviewed and approved by a four-person committee drawn from PEI Group and Scientific Infra & Private Assets, covering editorial, research and product. Members for this edition: Bruno Alves, Georgene Huang, Abhishek Gupta, and Kurt Reinhart.
The committee has final discretion over the published ranking. It may adjust the treatment of an entry, or withhold one, where a data quality issue, a corporate action or a classification question makes the computed result unrepresentative. Departures from the computed order are recorded with their reasons.
31 August 2026. No new fund data enters the edition after that date, which falls after the right-of-reply window closes.
Individual fund cash flows are not published. Ranked outputs, benchmark composition and eligibility rules are.
The ranking measures past performance against a benchmark. It is not a recommendation, an endorsement, or a forecast of future results.
How to read the ranking
Across the whole universe, alpha averages close to zero by construction — a property of a correctly specified benchmark rather than a view on the asset class. For every fund above the market, another sits below it.
The table is published as the top N of M eligible managers, so the size of the eligible universe is always disclosed alongside the rank.
Each benchmark is built from the mandate as declared by the manager, fixed before any alpha is computed, and its composition is published on the platform profile. A rank is only as sound as the benchmark behind it, so the ranking is reviewed whenever benchmarks are recalibrated.
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