India will remain Blackstone Inc’s biggest market in Asia and the private equity firm may look at infrastructure investments there in future, a top company official said on Tuesday.
The US-based firm, which manages around $1 trillion in assets globally, said India One of its best performing markets. Blackstone President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Gray said at a press briefing that the South Asian nation is gaining momentum because of its rapid growth compared to other large countries and a “growth-oriented government”.
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“India is a key part of the anchor of our Asia strategy. Japan and Australia follow suit,” Gray said.
Blackstone said it manages $50 billion in assets in India, including private equity and real estate.
It has raised more than a billion dollars in real estate stock sales in the past year alone, Reuters reported.
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Private equity deals in India totaled $32 billion last year, down 27% from 2021. However, India’s share in total Asia funding increased from 16% to 25% in the same period.
Gray said Blackstone would also look at investing in Indian infrastructure in the future, an area where pension funds including KKR & Co Inc as well as the CPP Investment Board and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) are already active.
Blackstone also plans to invest more in data centers and warehousing, said Amit Dixit, its senior managing director for India, which is asking for growth in e-commerce transactions as well as technology giants like Alphabet in India. Is. Google To store customer data locally.
Even though Blackstone is bullish on India, Gray said greater certainty about tax and capital market laws would help increase foreign investment in India.
He said, ‘There are many other rules of the capital market in India.
Blackstone, however, is taking a selective approach to China because geopolitical factors make it difficult to invest in the world’s second-largest economy, Gray said in a rare public comment about investments in China aimed at The latter is to boost your economy. It recorded one of its worst growth levels in nearly half a century last year.
Refinitiv data shows that private equity-backed mergers and acquisitions in China will fall 67% year-on-year in 2022, totaling $36 billion.
The data shows that China’s share of total private equity deal value in Asia is set to fall from 41% in 2021 to 28% in 2022.
The US government is tightening scrutiny on US investments in China as tensions over trade and technology remain.
Reuters reported last week that the administration of President Joe Biden plans to ban investment in some Chinese technology companies and increase scrutiny of others.
The text of this story is published from a wire agency feed without any modification.
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