BlackRock Completes Acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners

BlackRock, Inc. BLK completed the acquisition of a private equity company — Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).

Earlier this year, BLK announced the decision to acquire Global Infrastructure Partners for a total cash consideration of $3 billion and around $12 million worth of BlackRock common stock.

More on BlackRock’s Acquisition of GIP

The acquisition creates an industry leader in infrastructure, spanning equity, debt and solutions and offering a wide variety of infrastructure sector knowledge and exposure in existing and emerging economies. The combined infrastructure platform will be branded as Global Infrastructure Partners, a division of BlackRock.

With about $170 billion in assets under management (AUM), the platform will employ a 600-person global workforce to handle a diverse portfolio of more than 300 active investments across 100 countries.

With this acquisition, BlackRock brings together more than $100 billion of private markets Assets Under Management or AUM and nearly $750 million of run rate management fees under its control, increasing private markets AUM by around 40% and expanding run rate revenues.

Management Remarks

“Infrastructure represents a generational investment opportunity. Through the combination of BlackRock and GIP, we are well positioned to capitalize on the long-term structural trends that will continue to drive the growth of infrastructure and deliver superior investment opportunities for clients globally,” stated Laurence D. Fink, BlackRock chairman and CEO.

“We are excited to embark on this new chapter as Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a part of BlackRock, with the goal of creating the premier global infrastructure investing firm,” said Bayo Ogunlesi, Global Infrastructure Partners’ chairman and chief executive officer. The combination of our institutional intellectual capital, investing and business improvement capabilities, global footprint, corporate and government relationships will allow us to deliver attractive investments for our investors and innovative solutions for our customers,” he added.

Final Words on BlackRock’s Acquisition of GIP

The combination of GIP and BlackRock’s highly complementary infrastructure products results in a comprehensive global infrastructure franchise with diverse origination and asset management capabilities.

The merged organization, worth more than $150 billion, will aim to provide clients with market-leading, holistic infrastructure expertise across equity, debt and large-scale solutions.

GIP’s exclusive origination and business improvement capabilities, combined with BlackRock’s worldwide corporate and sovereign contacts, create a platform for diversified, large-scale sourcing to support client deal flow and co-investment opportunities.

Story continues

Integration of GIP and BlackRock will benefit clients by offering greater origination and business improvement capabilities.

BLK Zacks Rank & Price Performance

Year to date, shares of BlackRock have gained 17.2% compared with the industry’s growth of 24.5%.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Currently, BLK carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Acquisition Deal by Other Finance Companies

This week, LPL Financial Holdings LPLA, alongside its subsidiaries LPL Financial LLC, completed the acquisition of Altria Wealth Solutions, Inc. or Altria.

LPL Financial expects to meet or exceed its retention target of 80%. Altria will function as a wholly owned portfolio company through the onboarding of Altria advisors, which is anticipated to be complete in mid-2025.

Last week, TowneBank TOWN agreed to acquire Village Bank and Trust Financial Corp. The all-cash transaction is valued at $120 million.

The deal is anticipated to be roughly 6% accretive to TOWN’s 2025 earnings per share, assuming the execution of cost savings on a GAAP basis. TOWN projects an approximately 1% improvement in common equity tier 1 capital and an 80-basis points expansion in efficiency ratio next year.

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