The Founding Partner of Global Infrastructure Partners, Adebayo Ogunlesi will see his net worth grow to $2.3bn dollars once the takeover deal involving investment management company — Blackrock is finalised.
According to a Bloomberg report, the deal is expected to hoist Ogunlesi to billionaire status. With a 17.5 per cent stake in Global Infrastructure Partners, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his total fortune at approximately $2.3bn.
Blackrock, on Friday, announced that it is buying Global Infrastructure Partners, a company founded by Nigerian investment banker Adebayo Ogunlesi, in a $12.5bn deal.
The company also said it would appoint Ogunlesi to the board at the next scheduled board meeting after the close of the deal.
While commenting on the acquisition, Blackrock’s Chairman, Laurence Fink said the deal is “one of the most exciting long-term investment opportunities.”
According to a statement, Blackrock is to pay $3bn in cash and offer Ogunlesi and five other co-founders of Global Infrastructure Partners 12 million shares in Blackrock, thus making them the second biggest shareholders in the global asset management giant.
Once the deal closes, Ogunlesi will join an exclusive class of dollar-denominated Billionaires.
According to a Financial Times report, Ogunlesi credits his wife Amelia for a career switch that led on Friday to a $12.5bn deal and a leadership position at BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager.
In 2005, Ogunlesi, then a top banker at Credit Suisse, was summoned to Omaha, Nebraska, by the energy arm of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to study a large takeover. It was the kind of call most financiers dream of, but Ogunlesi complained to his wife: “I really don’t want to go.”
In an interview with the Financial Times, he said his wife offered an ultimatum, “Either you decide you like your job and you want to keep doing it. Or, if you decide you don’t, go find something else. But please don’t think you can spend the next five years moaning.”
After that “kick in the behind”, Ogunlesi quit banking and at the age of 52, decided to try his hand as an investor.
Ogunlesi and a handful of colleagues, mostly from Credit Suisse, considered private equity, then near the apex of a pre-financial-crisis takeover bubble. But they opted for a contrarian bet, raising a fund to invest in the niche sector where he had done his first deal in 1983: the financing and operating of airports, energy plants and other crucial infrastructure.
The 70-year-old holds first-class honours from Oxford University, a law degree and MBA from Harvard and a clerkship on the Supreme Court under Thurgood Marshall. He was head of Credit Suisse’s investment banking division and lead independent director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
SOURCE: PUNCHNG
