Infrastructure Investor talks to Achal Bhuwania as part of their 2026 Mid-Market Report

Europe’s infrastructure landscape is being reshaped by three powerful forces: the energy transition, accelerat­ing digitalisation and the urgent need for energy security. Sitting at the centre of this shift is the mid‑market – an often overlooked but essential engine room from which most of the conti­nent’s deal flow arises.

As capital has gravitated towards large‑cap global managers, opportuni­ties in the mid‑market have multiplied, offering stronger entry points, greater value‑creation potential and the ability to build scale organically.

Achal Bhuwania, Chief Investment Officer at Equitix, explains why the mid‑market really matters, how value is created and how to build diversified portfolios through multiple market cycles.

Q: Why has mid‑market infrastructure become a strategic priority for Europe?

Mid‑market infrastructure spans a broad range, typically equity investments of €50 million- €500 million – though at Equitix, we focus on the €50 million-€250 million segment. That band represents well over half of all transactions happening across Europe, making it essential to the delivery of the region’s largest structural priorities: energy transition, digitalisation and energy security. This is the market segment where Equitix has focused its expertise and we now have a long track record of sourcing and executing transactions across the region.

These priorities cannot be achieved through large‑cap infrastructure alone. The scale and volume of mid‑market projects create the practical foundation on which national and regional strategies depend. Mid‑market investing is therefore not only aligned to Europe’s strategic objectives, but also a critical enabler of them. By default, it’s becoming a strategic priority in its own right.

Q: What advantages does the mid‑market offer versus large‑cap infrastructure?

The mid‑market operates very differently from the highly intermediated, process‑driven world of large‑cap infrastructure whereby ‘big‑ticket’ transactions usually run through polished M&A processes. Mid‑market transactions, by contrast, are predominantly relationship‑driven and bilateral – a dynamic that rewards local presence, trust and long‑term engagement. Equitix has multiple regional offices across Europe and uses local insights and long-term partnerships – built over the last 20 years – to source and execute on mid-market investment opportunities.

Lower liquidity in recent years, particularly between 2023 and 2025 when most capital flowed to global large‑cap managers, has created reduced competition in the mid‑market. This has made entry points more attractive and has created natural opportunities for alpha.

Value creation also looks different. Mid‑market investors can assemble scale over time by acquiring homogenous assets and later exiting to large‑cap platforms or long‑term owners seeking larger portfolios. Equally, they can build value organically by improving management teams, driving efficiencies and maturing platforms. In a market where liquidity and competition are concentrated at the large end, converting mid‑market assets into large‑cap assets is a powerful tool for generating returns.

Q: Europe is the world’s most active infrastructure market. Why is the mid‑market still underserved there?

That’s a good question. Europe’s mid‑market is highly fragmented and dominated by smaller managers – most below $5 billion AUM. The fundraising environment from 2023 to 2025 was especially challenging for these firms, restricting their ability to transact, retain talent and deploy capital. Several have paused activity or been acquired by larger multi‑asset platforms.

Allocators, meanwhile, remain cautious. They want assurance that managers will be stable, scalable and able to retain their key people. This has created a scarcity of institutional‑quality mid‑market supply. So, to answer the question, it’s underserved because of the market forces at play, rather than just a scarcity of capital.

This is where we at Equitix can differentiate ourselves. We have now hit circa $20 billion AUM, while still being local and focused on the mid‑market. Over the last five years, we’ve deployed $1.5 billion-$2 billion annually and nearly $3 billion across 18 transactions in 2025 alone.

Underpinning this has been our ability to retain and develop specialist talent, maintain a steady deal cadence, and deliver mid‑market scale.

Q: What examples across the industry best illustrate how investors can navigate shifting market conditions and identify relative value opportunities?

The market has oscillated in recent years, with interest rate rises, the emergence of AI and supply chain blockages among the many factors. Investors have certainly had a lot to think about.

We view diversification as one of the main strategies to prosper during these challenging periods. For example, between 2018 and 2022, when renewables valuations were stretched, we pivoted towards transport and regulated networks, acquiring rolling stock portfolios, as well as transmission and distribution assets.

When the market turned during the macroeconomic turbulence of 2023-25, we moved decisively back into renewables and deployed $3 billion-$4 billion of equity while valuations had become attractive again.

This opportunistic, counter-cyclical approach is not new. In 2017-18, during the uncertainty around Brexit, we acquired more than 500MW of UK solar assets across four portfolios at highly attractive prices – then avoided solar for six years as returns in the market diminished.

Our platform’s diversification and scale allow us to pivot towards the best risk‑adjusted opportunities rather than just follow market beta. That flexibility is core to long‑term alpha generation.

Q: What role does mid-market infrastructure play in the energy transition and how can the impact be measured?

The inherent value of mid-market infra is its ability to bridge the gap between small and utility scale projects. This has been evident within the energy transition, where the mid-market has been a huge driver of progress. This has perhaps most notably been the case for wind and solar, but also in areas such as EV charging and green hydrogen.

To date, Equitix has invested more than $5 billion into renew­able energy assets across Europe.

Quantifying impact is crucial to our investment process, reflected in commercial performance, societal contribution, and asset resilience, which together strengthen the future‑readiness of our assets.

Our innovative collaboration with the UK Space Agency and Sust Global – through which we are using satellite-driven climate analytics to identify early signals of shifting wind speeds – is a good example of how we are deepening our understanding of resilience.

The objective is not simply to quantify sustainability outcomes, but to embed these insights into our investment processes that protect and grow long‑term value.

Q: Despite the relative slowdown in fundraising, mid-market infrastructure strategies have held up in the face of the challenging macroeconomic backdrop. Why do you think this is?

The mid-market often benefits from being agile, in a way that perhaps the larger-cap players are unable to be. We have more latitude to follow our convictions and move quickly on emerging trends – such as digitalisation or the energy transition – when opportunities arise.

“The mid-market often benefits from being agile, in a way that perhaps the larger-cap players are unable to be”

Certainly, for us, diversification has been a huge driver of performance and has underpinned the construction of our fund portfolio.

Our portfolio construction strategy for the UK and European closed end funds is different to market norm for closed end funds. Rather than limiting portfolios to 10-12 assets, our funds typically contain 25-30, enabling stronger capital preservation, more stable inflation‑linked cash yields and resilience to underperformance in any individual asset.

Diversification is a key tool to mitigate risks such as fluctuations in power prices, with the objective of achieving resilient long-term performance. This was evident during covid-19 and again through the macroeconomic challenges of 2023-25. Back then, our NAV growth, as well as distributions and asset performance, remained strong. This served as strong validation for our investment thesis of building a diversified portfolio across sectors and scale.

Q: How has the slowdown in core infrastructure over the past few years impacted the sector’s longer‑term outlook?

The recent fundraising slowdown has been challenging. But it has also reset valuations and sharpened the focus on fundamentals. Over the long term, that’s constructive. Core infrastructure still benefits from powerful tailwinds – electrification, grid reinforcement, digital connectivity and security of supply. This continues to drive predictable, inflation‑linked cash flows. In the near term, tighter liquidity has created pockets of relative value and less crowded processes, enabling disciplined investors to secure better entry points and build platforms organically rather than having to pay premiums for scale.

At Equitix, we’ve remained positive on core infrastructure throughout and invested over $5 billion over the last three years, across 50 separate transactions.

“Core infrastructure still benefits from powerful tailwinds – electrification, grid reinforcement, digital connectivity and security of supply”

Our approach to the market is one of ‘value creation’, which I think has resonated with our partners and investors. This has allowed us to unlock the capital necessary and generate the value we’re seeing within the core infra space.

A recent example of this is our strategic partnership with a major Australian institutional investor. Together, we’re jointly funding a project pipeline to grow our existing portfolio of hybrid renewable assets. This is a project that has limited technology and no development risk with huge potential to deliver value. We’re still doing what core infra typically does, which is identifying and working hard to mitigate downside risks, such as in construction, using our experience.

While the core market has been certainly challenging, we’ve maintained strong momentum in raising capital in the mid‑market, and have attracted partners who want to participate in the alpha that we’re generating. When all is said and done, this segment of the market still offers plenty of opportunities, and both the energy transition and demographic mega-trends continue to attract investors to the European mid-market.