(Bloomberg) -- Blackstone Inc. is hiring a pair of credit veterans, as it looks to grow beyond corporate debt investments and into asset-based finance and infrastructure, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Värde Partners Inc.’s former head of financial services, Aneek Mamik, will be joining Blackstone in November as a senior managing director in New York. He will focus on asset-based finance investments and will be head of financial services within the recently-formed Blackstone Credit and Insurance, or BXCI, unit, the person said, who requested anonymity as the matter is private. Prior to Värde, Mamik spent more than a decade at GE Capital, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Chris Yonan is also set to join Blackstone in October as its head of European infrastructure in London, focusing on investments like energy credit funds, the person added. Yonan was previously the co-head of power, utilities and infrastructure at Jefferies Financial Group in New York and has worked at Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc, his LinkedIn profile shows.
Both Mamik and Yonan will be joining BXCI as partners in the infrastructure and asset-based credit group which is led by Rob Horn, Blackstone’s global head of infrastructure and asset-based credit.
BXCI’s infrastructure and asset based group has about $75 billion in assets under management and has committed more than $20 billion this year, according to a Blackstone spokesperson.
“There is a powerful shift underway as more types of borrowers recognize the benefits of private credit,” said Horn in an emailed statement. “It’s evolved from financing M&A to financing major segments of the real economy.”
Blackstone is looking to keep pushing into the investment-grade credit market, which spans from debt backed by consumer loans to financing for data centers and the energy transition.
Demand for debt from borrowers in this space could push the private-lending market to hit a $25 trillion mark, Michael Zawadzki, Blackstone Credit and Insurance’s global chief investment officer, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in June.
Blackstone has already made inroads in this market, raising a $7.1 billion fund last year to finance solar companies, electric car parts makers and technology to cut carbon emissions. It has also led debt packages for cloud computing firm CoreWeave Inc., tied to assets including microchips, and has increased its exposure to credit card debt, by working with banks such as Barclays Plc.
The push also comes as firms investing in private credit assets ensure tie-ups or purchases of insurers, whose money is fueling the growth of the market.
The BXCI division was formed last year after Blackstone consolidated groups that invest in corporate credit and asset-based finance. The business, led by Gilles Dellaert. has about $330 billion of assets under management, with a goal to grow its total credit assets to $1 trillion within a decade.
(Updates second to last paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the reference to BXCI’s AUM in fifth paragraph and name of unit in first deck headline.)
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