Blackstone and Legal & General agree to a private credit partnership

By Iain Withers

LONDON (Reuters) – British insurance company Legal & General has acquired a private credit partnership with Blackstone, the company said in a statement Thursday, becoming the latest financial company to grow in massive growth in a booming market for investors lending companies.

L&G, the UK’s largest investment company with £1.1 trillion ($1.5 trillion) managed assets, also said it will help strengthen it in two areas covered by CEO Antonio Simoes.

The UK company said that when pension businesses access Blackstone, particularly investment grade credit assets in the US, they will invest billions of pounds over time by gaining 10% of the unit’s new business flow.

Finance companies are competing for a greater foothold in the private credit market. They are partnering with existing players such as City, UBS, Capital Group, and others, like Apollo, Atlantic General and KKR.

Others like Wall Street giant BlackRock have bought it through the $12 billion acquisition of private credit company HPS investment partners, while others such as HSBC are trying to build their own ventures.

In a statement, L&G’s Simoes said the partnership with Blackstone will help meet growing demand from clients for public-private investment products.

“L&G will benefit from growth in asset management as it develops a more diverse asset pipeline for pension books and more sophisticated investment solutions for clients around the world,” says Simoes.

The partnership was first reported by Bloomberg News.

($1 = 0.7349 pounds)

(Reporting by Ian Wizards of London and Deeraj Kumar of Bengaluru, edited by Sonia Cheema, Joe Babier and Stephen Coates)