BlackRock Buying Data Center, Infrastructure Investor GIP For $12.5B

BlackRock inked a deal to acquire Global Infrastructure Partners, an infrastructure fund manager with over $100B in assets under management, for $3B in cash and 12 million shares of BlackRock common stock, representing a total of roughly $12.5B. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

Among other assets, GIP owns CyrusOne, a hyperscale data center platform with more than 50 data centers in U.S. and European markets. GIP also has sizable holdings in cell towers, including Vantage Towers in 10 European countries and Ascent Telecom Infrastructure Private Ltd., a tower company in India.

Various long-term structural trends support deeper infrastructure investment, according to BlackRock, such as increasing demand for upgraded digital infrastructure like fiber broadband, cell towers and data centers. Also, the size of public deficits means that private capital will be more important in funding infrastructure.

“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,” BlackRock Chairman Laurence Fink said in a statement.

GIP management, including GIP Chairman and CEO Adebayo Ogunlesi and four of its founding partners, will lead the combined infrastructure platform, according to BlackRock, which will also appoint Ogunlesi to its board of directors after the deal closes.

The transaction represents BlackRock's largest acquisition since its 2009 purchase of Barclays Global Investors and puts the company on a path to becoming the world's largest provider of exchange-traded funds, Bloomberg reported.