BlackRock’s Buyout of Preqin Will Make Its Founder Richer Than Larry Fink

BlackRock’s (BLK) latest acquisition is set to make Mark O’Hare, the founder of British financial data provider Preqin, richer than the head of the world’s largest asset manager. Yesterday (June 30), BlackRock announced plans to acquire Preqin in a $3.2 billion cash deal that will bolster its private-market strength. O’Hare owns nearly 80 percent of Preqin through his holding company Valhalla Ventures and is expected to make about $2 billion from the acquisition, Bloomberg reported — an increase that would boost the founder’s net worth above BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s $1.7 billion fortune.

“BlackRock is known for excellence in both investment management and financial technology. Together, we can accelerate our efforts to deliver better private markets data and analytics to our clients at scale,” O’Hare, who founded Preqin in 2003, said in a statement.

Specializing in data for private markets and other alternative assets, Preqin covers 190,000 funds, 60,000 fund managers and 30,000 private markets, with a user base of 200,000, including asset managers, insurers, wealth managers and banks, according to BlackRock. It is expected to have combined revenue of $240 million in 2024, said the asset manager, who noted that Preqin has grown 20 percent annually over the past three years. In addition to remaining a standalone product, Preqin’s data and research tools will be integrated with BlackRock’s Aladdin portfolio management software. O’Hare will join BlackRock as vice chairman as part of the acquisition, which is expected to close by the end of the year.

O’Hare also previously co-founded Citywatch, a British stock ownership database acquired by Reuters in 1998. and spent six years working as an executive at Boston Consulting Group. In addition to his entrepreneurial work in finance, O’Hare and his wife, Lindy, in 2020 opened a 350-seat outdoor auditorium known as the Thorington Theatre in Suffolk, England.

BlackRock Expands Into Private Markets

The purchase will help BlackRock, which currently manages about $10.5 trillion in assets, continue to expand its business into the private market, which it says is the fastest-growing sector of asset management. The Preqin deal follows BlackRock’s acquisition of private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) for $12.5 billion — a deal that is also expected to make GIP co-founder Adebayo Ogunlesi a billionaire when it closes later this year.

Alternative assets, which include investments such as private equity and infrastructure, are expected to reach nearly $40 trillion by 2030, according to BlackRock. Meanwhile, the private markets data market is currently worth $8 billion and could reach $18 billion by the end of the decade, BlackRock said.

“This acquisition is about driving evolution and growth in private markets by measuring them, understanding their performance drivers and making them more investable,” Fink said today (July 1) on a conference call, adding that he believes BlackRock can apply its index fund format to private markets. “We anticipate that indexes and data will be important drivers of the future democratization of all alternatives, and this acquisition is key to its success.”