In exchange for $12.5 billion, Adebayo Ogunlesi, the chairman and CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and a former Credit Suisse executive, will join BlackRock's board and global executive committee.

This is BlackRock's power move, propelling the company to become the biggest independent infrastructure manager globally. BlackRock will purchase GIP for a total consideration of $3 billion in cash and around 12 million shares of BlackRock's common stock, according to the announcement released on Friday.

The integrated infrastructure platform will be run by the GIP management team, which is headed by Bayo Ogunlesi and four of its founding partners. According to the release, "They will bring with them a proven track record of creating and managing high-performing private markets firms, as well as skilled investment and operationally oriented business improvement teams.

worldwide investment options for customers, and we are quite enthusiastic about the prospects that lay ahead of us," he continued. Bloomberg claims that Fink, 71, primarily founded BlackRock on the assumption that investors of all sizes would choose to participate in public company indexes at a lower cost as opposed to hiring stock pickers.

The GIP acquisition represents a renewed belief among the largest institutions that they will have to pay greater fees to invest in illiquid funds supporting large-scale, intricate projects.