Blackrock snaps up world’s biggest infrastructure investor in $12bn deal

Blackrock has snapped up one of the world’s biggest infrastructure investors for around $12bn today in a major push into the alternative investment sector for the asset management behemoth.

In a statement this morning, Blackrock said it would buy the firm in a deal made up of around $3bn in cash and some 12m shares of Blackrock common stock. A merger between the two firms is set to complete in the third quarter of next year subject to the greenlight from regulators.

GIP is the world’s largest independent infrastructure manager and will bolster the firm with over $100bn in assets under management.

A tie-up between the investots marks a major push into infrastructure for Blackrock which said today that “structural trends” were supporting an accelerated push into the “$1trillion market”.

“Infrastructure is one of the most exciting long-term investment opportunities, as a number of structural shifts re-shape the global economy,” Blackrock chief Larry Fink said in a statement.

“We believe the expansion of both physical and digital infrastructure will continue to accelerate, as governments prioritize self-sufficiency and security through increased domestic industrial capacity, energy independence, and onshoring or near-shoring of critical sectors.”

The merged firms are set to create a $150bn infrastructure behemoth led by the GIP management team, spearheaded by chair Bayo Ogunlesi and four of its founding partners.

In a statement, Ogunlesi said the combined platform is set to be “the preeminent, one-stop infrastructure solutions provider for global corporates and the public sector”.

The announcement of the deal came as Blackrock posted an eight per cent jump in its fourth-quarter profit on Friday, bolstered by a rebound in markets that lifted the its assets under management.

On an adjusted basis, the world’s largest asset manager earned $1.45bn, or $9.66 per share, for the three months to the end of December. Analysts on average had priced in a profit of $8.84 per share, according to LSEG data.