(Bloomberg) -- Blackstone Inc. is hiring a pair of credit veterans to cover investment-grade deals as the world’s largest alternative-asset manager continues its expansion into private credit.
The hires, who come from KKR & Co. and Ares Management respectively, will focus on asset-based debt, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Andie Goh, mostly recently from Ares where she focused on asset-based deals across private and public markets, will start in early January, said the person who declined to be identified as the matter is private.
Blackstone also brought on Jack Ervasti from KKR, where he was co-head of consumer in asset-backed debt. Ervasti started earlier this month. Both join as managing directors at BXCI, Blackstone’s credit and insurance arm, and will be based out of New York, according to the source.
Private credit has been expanding beyond corporate lending to chase higher quality credits backed by assets. Blackstone has been bulking up its team as it continues a push into the investment grade-credit market, where transactions run the gamut from debt tied to consumer loans to data center and energy transition-related deals. The BXCI division, led by Gilles Dellaert, has more than $350 billion of assets under management, with a goal to grow its total credit assets to $1 trillion within a decade.
Blackstone, KKR, Ares and Ervasti all declined to comment, while Goh confirmed her new position.
The infrastructure and asset-based credit platform, run by Robert Horn and which oversees more than $80 billion in assets, is central to BXCI’s growth strategy and has already made several key hires this year.
Blackstone’s credit arm emerged as the firm’s biggest business among its $1.1 trillion of assets in the quarter ended Sept. 30, edging out real estate as the biggest unit. The firm also decided to categorize a portion of the real estate lending business under credit.
“We are building a third-party performing credit juggernaut and we expect our business to grow significantly from here,” said Blackstone’s president Jonathan Gray during the third quarter earnings call.
Blackstone also made inroads in infrastructure and energy this year, buying interests in a $1 billion portfolio of infrastructure loans from Banco Santander SA and investing $288 million in energy storage and solar company Pine Gate Renewables.
--With assistance from Immanual John Milton.
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