HPS Investment Partners could hardly be more different than its suitor, BlackRock. Whereas BlackRock, an $11.5tn powerhouse, is best known for investing clients’ funds across huge swaths of public markets, HPS has earned a windfall on targeted bets in the private lending sector.
BlackRock’s more than $12bn deal for HPS earlier this month comes as the world’s biggest asset manager is seeking to compete with groups such as Blackstone and Apollo, which are already deeply entrenched in a market widely seen as one of the next major battlegrounds in finance.
BlackRock’s planned acquisition of HPS, which forms a part of its near $30bn private markets M&A spree this year, could quickly shift the power balance in private credit, where pension funds, insurers and other investors finance everything from corporate acquisitions to consumer loans — an area that was previously dominated by the traditional banking sector.