Nigerian banker Adebayo Ogunlesi is poised to become a certified billionaire after BlackRock announced a $12.5 billion deal to acquire his infrastructure investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, Adebayo Ogunlesi currently has a net worth of approximately $2.3 billion thanks largely to his 17.5% stake in GIP. This will propel him into the exclusive class of dollar-denominated billionaires once the BlackRock acquisition is finalized.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is paying $3 billion in cash upfront and issuing 12 million BlackRock shares to Ogunlesi and five other GIP co-founders – making them the firm’s second largest group of shareholders.
Ogunlesi helped pioneer infrastructure investing back in the 1980s with airport and energy financing deals. After a long stint in banking, his wife convinced him to try his hand at investing instead of “moaning” about his career. So at age 52, Ogunlesi departed Credit Suisse and co-founded GIP in 2006.
The Harvard and Oxford educated founder grew GIP into a market leader managing over $81 billion in infrastructure assets. Now 70, Ogunlesi will join BlackRock’s board and lend his infrastructure investing expertise to the Wall Street titan.
BlackRock Chairman Laurence Fink hailed it as “one of the most exciting long-term investment opportunities” for the company as it expands beyond plain vanilla funds into higher-return alternatives like infrastructure.
For Ogunlesi, the deal caps a long and pioneering career across high finance. It represents a personal windfall too as Nigeria’s most influential investment banker ascends into the billionaire rankings.
Source Ogunlesi’s net worth hits $2.3bn after GIP sale – Report