AviAlliance

Gerhard Schroeder serves as Managing Director and leads investment decisions from the firm's Düsseldorf headquarters. The investment team operates with a concentrated decision-making structure appropriate for a platform that holds only a handful of equity positions at any given time.

The firm was initially seeded by PSP Investments, one of Canada's largest pension funds, which backed the acquisition of Hochtief's airport portfolio. AviAlliance manages capital through both managed accounts and its Luxembourg-based AIFMD platform, AviAlliance Capital, though aggregate AUM figures are not publicly disclosed.

The firm takes concentrated equity positions — typically majority or influential minority stakes — in European hub airports. It focuses on established gateways with non-discretionary passenger demand, actively managing operations and capital planning through board representation rather than pursuing financial-engineering returns. Greenfield airport development is explicitly outside the mandate.

The portfolio has historically been entirely European. Known positions include airports in Germany (Düsseldorf, Hamburg), Greece (Athens), and Hungary (Budapest). There is no public record of non-European airport investments.

AviAlliance is structured as a permanent-capital platform, not a closed-end fund with a fixed investment period. This allows it to hold airport positions through multi-decade concession cycles without the forced-exit timeline that conventional infrastructure funds face. The Budapest acquisition in 2024 indicates no near-term liquidity pressure.

PSP Investments is the foundational capital partner that backed the firm's creation in 2007. While PSP's infrastructure allocation underpins the platform, AviAlliance operates independently from Düsseldorf with its own investment team and governance, and has co-invested alongside other institutional partners including GIC.

The firm pursues airport privatization processes and negotiated secondary acquisitions of existing stakes. The Budapest transaction was a government privatization, while the original Athens position came through the Hochtief portfolio carve-out. Relationship-based sourcing with European governments and institutional sellers is central to the pipeline.