BlackRock Inc. has agreed a deal to buy Adebayo Ogunlesi’s Global Infrastructure Partners for about $12.5 billion, pushing the world’s biggest money manager into the top ranks of investors that make long-term bets on energy, transportation and digital infrastructure.
According to a Bloomberg report, BlackRock will pay $3 billion of cash and about 12 million shares, worth about $9.5 billion at Thursday’s close, and the deal is expected to close in the third quarter.
A former Credit Suisse executive, Ogunlesi, who is GIP’s chairman and chief executive officer, will join BlackRock’s board and global executive committee.
Nigerian-born Ogunlesi, a lawyer and Investment banker, has several decades of leadership experience in the financial services industry, including investment banking and private equity.
The acquisition of GIP, a private equity firm and Fortune 500 companies, which manages $100 billion, is the biggest deal in more than a decade for BlackRock and a major step by CEO Larry Fink to transform the firm into a key player in the rapidly growing market for private and alternative assets, noted the report.
Fink and BlackRock President, Rob Kapito, in a memo to employees, said, “The unprecedented need for new infrastructure – for digital infrastructure, for upgraded logistics hubs, and for decarbonization and energy security – coupled with record high government deficits means that private capital will be needed like never before. This will be one of the fastest-growing areas of our industry over the next 10 years.”
