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BlackRock has set an ambitious $400bn fundraising target for its private investment businesses, as executives laid out a plan to almost double the market value of the world’s largest asset manager by 2030.
The 2030 targets show how BlackRock and its chief executive Larry Fink hope to build the business as it moves to compete with giants of the alternative asset world, including Blackstone, Apollo Global Management and KKR.
BlackRock last year agreed to spend about $28bn to buy Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), credit investment shop HPS Investment Partners and private fund data provider Preqin in quick succession, as Fink shifted the group away from its public market roots.
“It is our job to stay ahead and to continuously reinvent BlackRock,” chief operating officer Rob Goldstein said. “We have been investing in the building blocks to serve clients,” he added, characterising the three businesses as a “game changer”.
GIP has been active under its new owner, striking a deal in March worth $22.8bn to buy dozens of ports, including two on both sides of the Panama Canal, as well as partnering with Microsoft on a new $30bn artificial intelligence investment fund. BlackRock’s takeover of HPS is expected to close in July.
Fink, who will address investors later on Thursday, has said BlackRock clients are increasingly seeking out private markets and that the company decided to compete by acquiring top players in the industry.
“Private markets are no longer a separate or a standalone exposure for our investors,” he said when announcing the takeover of HPS in December.
The company said it believed revenues could eclipse $35bn a year by 2030, growing roughly 10 per cent a year.
Much of that expansion will be fuelled by its private investment and technology businesses. Martin Small, BlackRock’s chief financial officer, said shifting just a small portion of client assets from public market funds into its new private investment strategies could generate $1bn of base fee growth for the firm.
BlackRock expects that 30 per cent or more of its revenues will be generated from those areas by 2030, up from 15 per cent at the end of last year. The new fundraising target for the private investment divisions works out at about $65bn a year between 2025 and 2030.
The New York-headquartered business also set a $15bn adjusted operating income target and said it believed its market value could rise to $280bn by 2030, up from $154bn today.
