AIC Ltd. today announced plans to launch a new global infrastructure fund, sub-advised by Chicago-based Brookfield Redding, an investment manager known for property, power, and other infrastructure assets.

Subject to regulatory approval, the Brookfield Redding Global Infrastructure Corporate Class will be available for sale starting April 14, while a trust version is anticipated to follow in May 2008.

“This is an exceptional investment opportunity for advisors and investors, enabling them to tap into the multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure market,” says Jonathan Wellum, AIC’s CEO and chief investment officer.

Brookfield Redding is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, which has a long history of investment and operation of infrastructure assets. With a team of 25 analysts and offices in Chicago, London, Singapore and Sydney, Brookfield Redding has been researching and investing in publicly traded companies in the relatively new infrastructure asset class business since 2003.

The fund’s fundamental objective is to seek long-term capital appreciation by investing primarily in the securities of companies believed to be well-financed and well-managed in infrastructure and related industries which are believed to be priced below their intrinsic value.

Brookfield Redding follows a disciplined, bottom-up stock research and selection process which enables the firm to uncover value through in-depth research. Each prospective business investment is ranked according to its business model, management and fundamentals before being added to the fund’s portfolio.

“Our focus at Brookfield Redding centers on understanding the value of the underlying asset and, more importantly, the cash flow stream associated with the asset,” says Kim Redding, CEO and chief investment officer, Brookfield Redding. “As we all know, sectors vary in terms of being in favor or out of favor on the stock market. It’s for this reason that we love periods like the current market disruption that we are experiencing because it results in things being out of favor for the wrong reasons. If you’re going to own an asset, be it real estate, a commercial office building, or a hydro generating dam, you want to buy a hundred dollars of value at fifty dollars, if you can. The current market allows for this.

“If you think about infrastructure and the buy, hold and prosper model of AIC, it’s the perfect asset class,” adds Redding. “You’re buying assets that have a monopolistic position with long-lived cash flows and if you can get in, understand and position yourself in those investments, they last for decades.”