Blackstone to raise US$5bil for infrastructure fund

NEW YOR: Thirteen months after unveiling a gigantic pledge from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Blackstone Group LP is nearing a first close of US$5bil for its inaugural infrastructure fund, according to people familiar with the matter.

The fundraising, expected to be finalized this week, is slightly behind schedule but will mark the biggest initial close for a first-time fund across any alternative investment strategy after SoftBank’s US$100bil Vision Fund and the China Structural Reform Fund, according to Preqin. The data exclude funds with a single close.

A spokeswoman for New York-based Blackstone declined to comment.

The planned US$40bil fund – Blackstone Infrastructure Partners – raised eyebrows when it was unveiled last May in Riyadh during a visit from President Donald Trump and business leaders including Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone’s chairman and chief executive officer. The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, known as PIF, pledged as much as US$20bil, on the condition that every dollar would be matched against commitments from other investors.

Industry executives have said even the optics of PIF’s massive presence in the Blackstone fund could put it at a disadvantage when vying for investments that require support from local, state or federal officials. Still, the Saudis will have a minority position in any deal and no investment discretion, according to some of the people.

The first close gives Blackstone a dedicated fund in an area where key rivals broke ground more than a decade ago. While the close isn’t as large as some observers expected, the fact that Blackstone has reached this juncture at all signals that naysayers’ prognostications may have been premature.

The capital raising comes even as Trump has yet to deliver on a promise to facilitate the investment of as much as US$1.7 trillion in the next decade. “It would be helpful if they do something around infrastructure,” Blackstone president Jonathan Gray said of the federal government in May.

Still, “there’s tonnes to do even without it,” the firm’s chief financial officer, Michael Chae, said on an earnings call in February.

The firm initially didn’t say whether it was aiming to raise the matching commitments in one fell swoop, but on a call with reporters in February, Blackstone’s then-president, Tony James, clarified that the US$40bil would be gathered “over the next decade or so.”

A January memorandum from a Pennsylvania pension plan said Blackstone was seeking US$7.5bil during its initial fundraising phase. That time frame includes the next nine months, over which there will be additional closes, said some of the people with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity because the information is private.

After March 2019, the fund won’t accept new pledges until its coffers have been emp- tied, an investment period Blackstone expects to last three to four years, the people said.

All along, the firm had been targeting between US$5bil to US$7.5bil of outside capital to form a fund of US$10bil to US$15bil including the PIF match during the initial phase, said the people. A first close for the infrastructure fund in the current quarter was Blackstone’s intention since inception, Chae said at a conference this month.

Still, the June time stamp is behind the March or April projection set internally, in part because senior hires took longer to get on board, according to people with knowledge of the matter and the Pennsylvania memo. Apart from PIF, investors include the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, which is cutting a US$500mil check, the New Mexico State Investment Council and the Parochial Employees’ Retirement System of Louisiana, according to fund disclosures and Bloomberg data.