Wüest Partner expands real assets expertise: Christian Topp takes over as Head of Infrastructure Advisory

With Christian Topp, Wüest Partner is strengthening its advisory and valuation expertise for institutional investors and investment managers in the real assets sector. Christian Topp has more than 25 years of experience in infrastructure and energy investments and most recently worked at Swiss Life Asset Managers as Head Infrastructure Equity Solutions.

Infrastructure is one of the fastest-growing asset classes in institutional private market portfolios. The combination of long-term stable, inflation-hedged cash flows and an increasingly attractive risk-return characteristic makes infrastructure for insurance companies, pension funds and pension funds an integral part of a diversified real asset allocation. Wüest Partner is taking this development into account and is expanding its valuation service offering to include independent advisory services along the entire investment life cycle.

Christian Topp brings a proven institutional investment perspective. At Swiss Life Asset Managers, he most recently headed Infrastructure Equity Solutions for institutional clients. Previously, he was responsible for the expansion of the infrastructure equity business at Allianz Capital Partners. His academic education includes a degree in energy and process engineering, a master's degree from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from London Business School. This combination of technical expertise and capital market know-how is of central importance for the evaluation and advice of complex infrastructure investments.

Christian Topp will work closely with Thomas Lehmann, who is responsible for infrastructure valuation, among other things, and will further develop the interface between strategic investment advice, transaction support and independent valuation.

"I am very much looking forward to working with Christian Topp in the future and to further expanding the business area together. Christian Topp's in-depth market expertise enables us to provide even more market-oriented valuation services for energy and infrastructure assets as a reliable basis for investment, financing and transaction decisions."

The goal is an integrated range of services that enables market and strategy analyses, investment and transaction advice as well as independent valuations from a single source – and thus takes into account the specific governance and reporting requirements of institutional investors.

"Infrastructure has evolved from a niche allocation to a core strategic component of institutional private market portfolios. With Christian Topp, we are gaining an expert who knows this asset class from the perspective of institutional investors – both on the investment side and in the structuring and valuation of complex transactions. This strengthens our ability to support investors truly independently and on an equal footing."

Stefan Stute, Partner Advisory Germany, Wüest Partner