The business is in infrastructure. One of the most repeated phrases during the Spain Investors Day that was held this week in Madrid was confirmed yesterday with one of those news that convulse investors, even if they take consumers a little too far. The world’s largest fund manager, the American BlackRock, with about 10 billion dollars under management, announced the purchase of another giant, the fund Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), which owns a 20.6 % of Naturgy. Adding this stake to the 0.92% it already had in Naturgy, BlackRock now controls 21.5% of the Spanish gas company and becomes its second largest shareholder, behind Criteria Caixa, with 26.7%.
The Rioja investment funds (CVC and the March family) remain Naturgy’s third shareholder, with 20.4%. Then comes the Australian IFM, with 14% of the capital.
GIP, also from the United States and managing $100 billion, is one of the world’s largest infrastructure funds, with such prominent assets as London’s Gatwick Airport, Sydney Airport and, also in Australia, the Port of Melbourne. Under its management are also strategic assets such as the Suez Canal and shale oil pipelines (oil from this rock).
BlackRock has agreed to pay $12.5 billion (€11.4 billion) for Global Infrastructure Partners. Of these, 3,000 million will be in cash, while the rest will be executed through the acquisition of 12 million shares, worth about 9,500 million at the closing price of the shares on Thursday.
The seven founders of GIP, including its president, Adebayo Ogunlesi, will receive the money in two installments. The first, at the close of the operation, which is expected in the third quarter of 2024, and the other 5 million, in five years.
According to the note sent yesterday by BlackRock, “the managers of GIP intend to distribute part of the profits among their 400 workers.
In total, founders and employees of GIP will become the largest shareholders of BlackRock and Adebayo Ogunlesi himself will join the executive committee of the group and will be responsible for running the entire infrastructure business. The new company will have more than 150,000 million dollars (140,000 million euros) in alternative assets. It will be able to compete on equal terms with the large infrastructure sector funds such as Macquarie or Brookfield, with the added privilege of being the market leader in variable income. In fact, after this acquisition, BlackRock hopes to repeat the successful move it made in 2009 with the purchase of Barclays Global Investors, which made it the largest provider of exchange-traded funds. Now, the cake is in the infrastructures, which BlackRock itself has quantified in a market of one trillion dollars. “One of those that offers the most attractive long-term investment opportunities as structural changes are reconfiguring the world economy”, as defined by the BlackRock note. “The global need for infrastructure, combined with the high deficits that limit public spending, creates an unprecedented opportunity for private capital to invest in infrastructure,” said Larry Fink, executive chairman of BlackRock in the statement yesterday.
If the operation can be quite a shock in the international markets, it will be no less so in Spain, where GIP was one of the main shareholders of Naturgy. The gas company declined yesterday to comment on the operation and how it may influence the company.
GIP has always been described as an aggressive fund and, unlike the rest of Naturgy’s shareholders, has never proclaimed an intention to stay for the long term. He joined the gas company in 2016 and the pressure to pay off this investment was rushing him. This type of fund usually exits its projects after between 5 and 10 years. GIP had been at Naturgy for seven years. The Géminis project, which the company presented in February 2022 to split the company in two, was, among other things, a formula to articulate the exit. But the war in Ukraine and the need to ensure supplies prevented it.
It remains to be seen whether BlackRock wants to maintain GIP’s exit schedule or, in keeping with its more strategic profile, bet on the long term. A not outlandish option considering that the two entities already formed a joint company, called the Medina Partnership, which owns 49% of the gas pipeline that connects Africa to Spain, Medgaz, 51% of which is in the hands of the gas company Algerian Sonatrach.
