- BlackRock has announced that its Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Fund (“GEPIF”) hit a $5.1 billion final close of Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Fund III
BlackRock has announced that its Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Fund (“GEPIF”) hit a $5.1 billion final close of Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Fund III (“GEPIF III”), making it the largest alternative investment fundraise in BlackRock history. The final close value also exceeded both the original Fund target of US$3.5 billion and the original hard cap of $4.5 billion.
The new fund’s commitments include investment mandates from over 50 institutional investors, including public and private pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundations, insurance companies, and non-profit organizations across the U.S., Europe, Asia and the Middle East. And over 70% of the commitments are from investors in the prior fund — which reflects investors’ high-level of confidence and trust in the GEPIF team and its expertise in the space.
Building on the investment strategy of its predecessor funds, GEPIF III is aiming to generate strong uncorrelated returns from investments in high-quality and essential energy infrastructure businesses and assets. And these companies will generally have long-term contracts and visible revenue streams from strong counterparties and seek to provide robust dividend yields to investors.
The investments are diversified geographically and by energy sub-sectors — which primarily consist of: 1) the power sector, including electric power generated from renewable sources (solar, wind, hydro and waste-to-energy) and from natural gas, while excluding coal-generated power, 2) the midstream sector, including energy-transportation and storage, and 3) the utility sector.
BlackRock has a goal of helping more and more people experience financial well-being. And as a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, the company’s clients depend on them for solutions they need when planning for their most important goals. As of December 31, 2019, BlackRock managed approximately $7.43 trillion in assets on behalf of investors worldwide.
Key Quotes:
“This milestone is a testament to BlackRock’s focus on helping clients achieve better investment outcomes. Investors are looking to build resilience into their portfolios and ballast against equity market shocks by increasing their allocations to less correlated exposures in private markets. The current market volatility has underscored the value of our commitment to delivering solutions that can help our clients match their long-term liabilities and support their beneficiaries. Investor demand for this fundraise reinforces our belief that infrastructure will play an increasingly important role in portfolio construction moving forward.”
-Edwin Conway, Global Head of BlackRock Alternative Investors
“The success of the fundraise reflects the search for diversified returns in a yield-starved environment, which continues to be front of mind for investors. Our strong off-market sourcing capabilities are differentiated by a disciplined investment approach focused on creating an optimized risk-adjusted return for our investors and a tailored solution for our partners and their customers. This philosophy has led to strong investment deployment and origination that includes multiple repeat partnerships with great companies, and we believe this strategy will continue to create many investment opportunities for our Funds.”
-Mark Florian, Head of the Global Energy & Power Infrastructure team within BlackRock Real Assets
