Legal & General (L&G, LSE:LGEN) and Blackstone (NYSE:BX) are announcing a long-term strategic partnership that combines the strength of L&G and Blackstone’s respective credit platforms to enhance L&G’s competitive advantage in annuities and bolster its asset management proposition in key geographies and channels.
L&G’s annuities business will leverage Blackstone’s private credit origination platform to access a pipeline of diversified investment-grade assets, predominantly from the US. This partnership will complement L&G’s existing capabilities to gain competitive advantage, enhanced returns, and support its growth ambitions. L&G will invest up to 10% of anticipated annuities new business flows. This will add to the $237 billion in third-party insurance assets Blackstone manages across investment-grade private credit, liquid credit, and other strategies.
Additionally, L&G’s asset management business will develop public/private hybrid credit solutions that combine Blackstone’s leading private credit platform with L&G’s best-in-class active fixed income capabilities. This will accelerate L&G’s ambitions to expand into highly attractive global wealth and wholesale?channels.
The partnership combines L&G’s leading positions in pension risk transfer and asset management – comprising a $122.5 billion (£92 billion) annuities book and $1.4 trillion (£1.1 trillion) in assets under management – with the strength and scale of Blackstone’s $465 billion credit platform.
Antonio Simões, Group CEO, L&G said: “Today’s announcement marks another important step in delivering our strategy for focused, sustainable growth and enhanced shareholder returns. Complementing L&G’s own insurance, investment and asset origination capabilities, our partnership with Blackstone will further cement our market leading position in pension risk transfer, and enable us to address growing demand for public-private hybrid investment products. L&G will benefit from a more diverse pipeline of assets for our annuity book, and growth in asset management as we develop more sophisticated investment solutions for clients around the world.”
Jon Gray, President and Chief Operating Officer, Blackstone said: “We’re thrilled to partner with L&G, a world-class firm with strong performance that we have long admired. Blackstone has been a pioneer in bringing the benefits of private markets investing to insurance companies, individuals and institutional investors. Together, our two firms’ unmatched scale and expertise should drive innovative solutions in the private credit market.”
Eric Adler, CEO, Asset Management, L&G said: “In June, we set out our vision as a leading global investor innovating to solve client challenges, using the power of L&G. This partnership brings together the combined strengths of L&G and Blackstone’s respective credit businesses, to offer new, innovative investment solutions and extend our international reach. I am especially energised by the potential of our alliance to advance our proposition in global wealth and wholesale channels, and deepen the capabilities we can draw upon to support our institutional clients.”
Philip Sherrill, Global Head of Insurance, Blackstone said: “We believe this partnership shows the best of what Blackstone can offer to our insurance company clients. The breadth of our capabilities allows us to support our partners across their businesses – originating assets, working together to identify investment opportunities, and designing products that meet the needs of both institutional clients and individual investors.”
