Alternative investment winners and losers in wake of OBBBA

President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which he signed on July 4, creates favorable and unfavorable conditions going forward for a variety of alternative investments, a varied group of assets that react in disparate manners to market forces, including tax law.

According to senior industry executives, including Jina Yoon, LPL Financial’s chief alternative investment strategist, a clear loser under the OBBBA is clean energy and clean energy infrastructure.

Alternative investments on the positive side of the ledger include opportunity zones and real estate, while those that generate carried interest are also regarded favorably.

“Many of the Biden era Inflation Reduction Act clean energy incentives are going to be phased out or eliminated,” Yoon wrote on Wednesday in a note to investors on LPL’s website.

“While the underlying fundamentals of existing projects can still produce positive cash flows, losing tax incentives and having to more quickly deploy capital are expected to negatively impact total returns,” Yoon wrote.

“The bill clearly has had an impact on the renewable energy market and how we think about it in the United States,” said a senior industry executive, who spoke privately to InvestmentNews about the matter. “Renewable energy companies will lose their federal subsidies, and that’s the issue.”

Wind farms, which use turbines to generate electricity, are proving particularly problematic, the executive added. President Trump is a vociferous critic of windmills and wind energy.

Changes in legislation or additional laws historically have created opportunities for the alternative investment marketplace to expand. Congress, for example, in 1980 amended the Investment Company Act of 1940, paving the way for Business Development Companies, which invest primarily in private loans of non-public companies in the United States.

The BDC and private credit market have grown substantially in the past decade.

Meanwhile, LPL’s Yoon noted that the move by the OBBBA to maintain the tax treatment of carried interest “is a significant relief for fund managers.”

“Increasing the required holding period by two years will marginally reduce after-tax returns; however, it is not expected to have a meaningful impact on the industry,” she wrote.

Opportunity zones are also winners.

“The permanent expansion of the [opportunity zone] program should provide additional investments in economically distressed areas,” Yoon wrote. “Legislative stability is also expected to drive more capital into real estate development, infrastructure projects, and businesses within these designated zones, and in turn may lead to the launch of new fund opportunities for investors to participate in the program.”