Ares Is Said to Agree on Acquisition of GCP’s Ex-China Business

(Bloomberg) — Ares Management Corp. has agreed to acquire GLP Capital Partners Ltd.’s operations outside of China, people familiar with the matter said, in what could rank as one of the biggest recent combinations in the alternative asset management industry.

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Ares and GCP are set to announce a transaction as soon as Tuesday, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

Ares declined to comment, while GCP didn’t have an immediate comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.

The firms had been discussing a deal that would feature a roughly $3.5 billion upfront payment, with the total value climbing to around $5 billion over time if certain targets are hit, Bloomberg has reported.

GCP has about $66 billion of assets under management outside China, spread across Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, the US and Brazil. Ares Chief Financial Officer Jarrod Phillips has said that the firm could grow in Asia through acquisitions, and also sees opportunities to expand in infrastructure equity.

Alternative asset managers are pursuing mergers to gain scale and expand into new sectors and geographies, turning into one-stop shops offering a range of investment strategies. The deal would expand Ares’s business in one of Wall Street’s hottest areas: infrastructure.

GCP has made bets on data centers and renewable energy just as investors look to ride on demand for infrastructure and resources to power what they hope will be an artificial intelligence boom.

GCP has traditionally invested in areas such as real estate tied to logistics, digital infrastructure and renewable energy. The firm grew out of Singapore-based GLP Pte, a developer and operator of warehouses that has benefited from the boom in e-commerce. GLP set up a fund management arm to invest third-party money in the sector, and it became a separate entity — GLP Capital Partners — after a series of transactions in 2022.

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