(Bloomberg) — BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, now wants to be a financier for private equity and alternative investment firms.
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Fresh off a year of almost $30 billion of deals to become a force in managing private credit, financial data and infrastructure assets, Chief Financial Officer Martin Small is starting to sketch out a plan that goes beyond investing client money to include managing capital for alternatives firms.
“One of the really important things we want to grow is in the private equity space,” Small said Tuesday at the Bank of America Corp. financial-services conference. “We’re starting to think of all the alternative asset managers as clients.”
The move would be similar to how BlackRock increasingly manages money for other asset managers or sells technology and risk-management systems to firms, including large players such as Franklin Resources Inc.
BlackRock is in the process of setting up a GP solutions business, Small said. That would serve so-called general partners of alternative-asset players who, in turn, manage money for limited partners like endowments or pensions.
The firm’s deal to acquire HPS Investment Partners — the private-credit manager and overseer of almost $150 billion of assets — is expected to close this year. After that, BlackRock plans to set up a financing unit led by a trio of new HPS executives.
This could “create an integrated provider of solutions to GPs where we can handle 100% of your direct lending, 100% of your fund finance, your GP-led secondaries,” Small said. “We can be a primary capital provider through our fund-of-funds business.”
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