I Squared Capital Brand Guidelines: Ex-Morgan Stanley Founders, Miami & Arriva

A 2012 start in New York and London.

I Squared Capital was founded in 2012. English Wikipedia, citing Bloomberg, says its founders were former senior executives at Morgan Stanley, including Sadek Wahba, Adil Rahmathulla and Gautam Bhandari. The firm’s own website lists Wahba as founder, chairman and managing partner, and Bhandari as co-founder, managing partner and global chief investment officer.

Its milestones page says the firm set up its headquarters in New York City in 2012 and opened a London office the same year, followed by Singapore in 2014 and New Delhi in 2015. In 2018 it moved its headquarters from New York to Miami. Sydney followed in 2022 and São Paulo in 2023; in 2024 came Munich, which the firm calls its first office in continental Europe, and Abu Dhabi; and a Tokyo office opened in 2026.

The first fund, ISQ Global Infrastructure Fund, closed in 2015, Wikipedia says, with commitments from investors including the Rhode Island State Investment Commission, the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board and Mitsubishi Corporation. A second fund closed in September 2018 and a third in April 2022. In December 2023, Wikipedia says, Blue Owl Capital increased its stake in the firm by buying part of a co-founder’s holding.

Hydro, roads, fibre and power.

The firm describes its method as developing investment “platforms,” starting small and growing big, in its own words. Its milestones page dates its first platform investment, in Cube Hydro, to 2014; Wikipedia says Cube Hydro was formed with Enduring Hydro and went on to own run-of-the-river hydroelectric plants in several US states. Wikipedia also records the 2014 purchase of the Jaipur Mahua Tollways, a road project on National Highway 11 in Rajasthan, India.

Energy and utilities followed. Wikipedia lists the Irish power company Viridian, bought in March 2016; the wind-farm developer Lincoln Clean Energy, bought in 2016 and sold to Ørsted in 2018; and Duke Energy’s hydroelectric and natural-gas business in Latin America, agreed in October 2016. In telecoms it bought Hutchison Global Communications in Hong Kong in 2017 and, after agreeing in 2020 to buy GTT Communications’ infrastructure division, set it up in 2021 as EXA Infrastructure, a London-based fibre and subsea-cable company. In March 2021 its joint bid with TDR Capital for the British temporary-power company Aggreko was accepted, Wikipedia says.

The company’s website groups its work into five strategies — Global Equity, Growth Markets, Energy Transition, Infrastructure Credit and InfraTech — across energy, utilities, transport and logistics, digital, social and environmental infrastructure. Its milestones page dates the Growth Markets, InfraTech and first credit strategies to 2021, the Energy Transition strategy to 2023 and its OpenInfra wealth platform to 2025. The site also says the firm received three Infrastructure Investor Annual Awards in 2024, among them Transport Investor of the Year for Europe.

The same page names early holdings of each strategy: TIP Trailer Services, which it calls one of the earliest investments of the Global Infrastructure Fund strategy launched in 2017; AG&P Gas in India and GridPoint, an energy-efficiency platform for commercial buildings, in 2021; Nassau Cruise Ports for the first credit strategy; and Absolute Energy, a renewables developer in Italy, in 2023. Wikipedia adds the Australian truck and trailer rental company Rentco in May 2023 and a 49 per cent stake in the Brazilian solar company Órigo Energia in January 2024.

How infrastructure investors present themselves.

Infrastructure investors sell something hard to picture: long-term ownership of things other people use every day. Their websites therefore lean on the assets themselves. Macquarie Asset Management’s pages open on named portfolio companies, from a New Zealand telecoms provider to an onshore wind farm in north-eastern Brazil, and Brookfield Infrastructure sorts its portfolio into utilities, transport, midstream and data, with ports, railways, toll roads and pipelines named as the things it owns and runs.

The language is consistent too. Brookfield Infrastructure speaks of “critical infrastructure” and long-life assets with contracted and regulated revenues; Macquarie Asset Management says it seeks results “over the long term.” Responsible-investment wording sits alongside it: Macquarie’s purchase of the former UK Green Investment Bank in 2017, renamed Green Investment Group, came with a green “special share” held by independent trustees, according to the UK government’s announcement of the sale.

Listed vehicles add another layer of documents. Brookfield Infrastructure publishes quarterly results, supplemental information, letters to unitholders and investor-day presentations, and in 2026 it set out a plan to fold its two listed securities into one. Parent groups publish annual reports and history timelines; Macquarie’s runs from a three-person Sydney office in 1969 to the motorway deal of 1994 that it calls the start of its infrastructure business.

Trade rankings are part of the picture. Infrastructure Investor’s II 100 list of managers placed GIP, by then part of BlackRock, at the top in November 2024, and noted that Macquarie, first in every earlier edition, had dropped to fourth. This guide sets out what can be checked about each firm — who founded it, who owns it and how it presents its portfolio — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Infrastructure Transformed.

In transport, I Squared agreed in October 2023 to buy Arriva, the passenger-transport group Deutsche Bahn had owned since 2010. Sustainable Bus reported that Arriva announced the completion on 3 June 2024, with all of its businesses across 11 countries passing to the new owner. In July 2025, Wikipedia says, I Squared bought the North American school-bus operators Durham School Services and Stock Transportation from Mobico Group, and in May 2026 it announced a purchase of ten data centres from Cogent Communications.

Two newer deals were still pending at the time of writing. On 28 October 2026 I Squared announced a definitive agreement to acquire Orizon Aerostructures, a Kansas City maker of aircraft structural components founded in 2016, with five facilities in Kansas and Oklahoma; agreed in October 2026, it had not completed at the time of writing. On 2 November 2026 the aircraft lessor Avolon announced an agreement with I Squared and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to set up Constellation Aviation, an aircraft-leasing platform; that venture too had not completed at the time of writing. In early November 2026 the firm’s website also reported the close of its second infrastructure credit strategy.

The firm signs its website with the registered line “Infrastructure Transformed” and lists offices from Miami and London to Taipei and Tokyo. For a design guide, I Squared Capital shows how a younger firm builds its identity from a short name, a one-line slogan and a timeline of offices and platforms. Compare GIP and Macquarie Asset Management, two other infrastructure investors in this series. For this guide we use a deep forest green, a warm brass and a pale stone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep I Squared Capital’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.