40|86 Advisors

40|86 Advisors

40|86 Advisors was established in 1986 as the investment management arm of IPALCO Enterprises, the holding company for Indianapolis Power & Light, and has operated independently since 2015. The firm traces its roots to managing the utility's nuclear decommissioning trust and pension assets, an origin that embedded liability-awareness deep into its underwriting culture. Named principals include CEO John Greer, though day-to-day portfolio leadership is distributed across senior sector heads rather than concentrated in a single CIO figurehead. The strategy centers on private, investment-grade credit across three distinct sleeves: corporate private placements, infrastructure debt, and commercial real estate lending. Each book is run with an explicit focus on relative value versus public markets — the corporate private placement portfolio targets issuers in the BBB to single-A range, typically with make-whole provisions and covenant packages that public bonds lack. Infrastructure commitments span regulated utilities, contracted power, and midstream energy on a senior secured basis. Real estate originations favor Class A industrial and multifamily in primary Sunbelt markets, structured as first mortgages with conservative loan-to-value ratios. Confirmed positions in the past include debt to American Electric Power and Duke Energy affiliates, though the firm does not routinely disclose individual credits. The firm manages roughly $20 billion in assets per investment-industry databases, with a team that remains deliberately lean — estimates suggest under 50 professionals operating from the Carmel, Indiana headquarters. The shop does not operate adjacent venture or philanthropic vehicles and has not expanded through satellite offices. In May 2024 the firm communicated no leadership changes, maintaining its steady-state operating model. The investor base is highly concentrated, with a dominant allocation from AES Corporation's insurance subsidiaries and select Midwestern public pension plans. The structural differentiator is a utility-born liability-matching framework that most asset managers only simulate. 40|86 does not just run credit portfolios — it underwrites every asset against a specific liability stream, a discipline inherited from its original mandate funding decommissioning trusts. This makes the firm a natural fit for insurers navigating capital charges under NAIC risk-based capital rules, a moat that third-party marketing-driven credit shops struggle to replicate.