BlackRock to acquire Adebayo Ogunlesi’s Global Infrastructure Partners for $12.5 billion

Bloomberg | Adebayo “Bayo” Ogunlesi had already racked up enough accolades to rival any of his elite friends.

There’s the undergraduate degree with first-class honors from Oxford University, the 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.

He even got a shout-out from Nigerian superstar Burna Boy, who sang he hustles “like Adebayo Ogunlesi” in his hit “Wonderful.”

Now a deal to buy the US$100 billion asset-management firm he co-founded and heads, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), is set to make him something else: a billionaire.

Ogunlesi, 70, assumes that title after BlackRock Inc. announced Friday it was buying GIP for US$12.5 billion. A GIP spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ogunlesi has managed to radiate an aw-shucks sense that he somehow fell into his job, even as the ambition and connections it took to get there were clear.

Major Player

The Nigerian-born son of a medical professor, he eventually did a short stint at white-shoe law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore before joining First Boston around his 30th birthday. His timing was perfect: The firm was a major player in the mergers business of Wall Street’s roaring ‘80s.

His rise continued once Credit Suisse took over the firm. He was put in charge of the entire investment banking division in 2002, helping boss John Mack slash thousands of jobs. But while Mack’s reputation for ruthlessness won him the nickname “Mack the Knife,” Ogunlesi’s was simply “Bayo.”

After reaching the heights of banking, he decided he needed a change when his wife remarked that he sounded miserable talking about work. A meal with colleague Matt Harris, who was co-head of the energy group, led them to the idea of a manager of infrastructure investments.

The two recruited Bill Woodburn, former head of General Electric Co.’s infrastructure business, over dinner at Harris’ favorite Midtown Manhattan restaurant, according to a 2017 profile of the firm. Other Credit Suisse alum joined as well, including Jonathan Bram, who was a co-head of the firm’s industrial and services group; Michael McGhee, who ran global transportation and logistics; and Raj Rao, from the global energy group.

The founding partners launched GIP in 2006, raising more than US$5 billion. Within a few years they owned London’s Gatwick and City airports, as well as Edinburgh’s, and have since invested in gas pipelines, offshore wind farms, power plants and port operators.

Ogunlesi, who is chief executive officer, is calculated to have a 17.5 percent stake by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and a total fortune of about US$2.3 billion. An equal split of GIP’s US$12.5 billion acquisition price would give the firm’s 27 other partners stakes worth more than US$380 million each.

Ogunlesi, who was appointed lead independent director at Goldman Sachs in 2014, plans to resign that position after GIP’s sale. A golfer who once sported an 8 handicap, he also sits on the board of Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp.

When Donald Trump won in 2016, he named Ogunlesi to the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum alongside several billionaires. The investor got an even more plum position from Joe Biden, whose National Infrastructure Advisory Council he now chairs.

Ogunlesi was one of a small number of international students in his class at Harvard’s law school, which at the time didn’t typically enroll them, he told the New York Times in 2002.

“There only was a guy from Saudi Arabia, a guy from Iran and me,” he said. “I assume Harvard thought that all of us would go back to our countries, become rich, and endow chairs. I hope the Iranian and Saudi did, because I never endowed a chair.”