BlackRock’s takeover of GIP potentially creates a colossal global force in the airport sector

The sale of Sydney Airport two years ago should have reinvigorated the airport business, but the long drawn out COVID pandemic, followed by the Ukraine war and a host of knock-on economic and financial implications, put paid to that.

Now the world's premier asset management company, BlackRock, has announced a takeover of one of the world's principal investors into airports: Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).

GIP will lead the infrastructure platform for the entity.

Together, the two can offer a formidable partnership, allying an experienced airport operator (albeit one that has reduced its portfolio in recent years) with a parent that seems suddenly to have 'found' infrastructure. And that financial, administrative and innovative muscle is just what the doctor ordered for a still ailing sector suffering from an M&A version of Long COVID.

As a side issue, but an important one, the transaction comes just as BlackRock, which has been criticised for posturing on the enforcement of ESG principles in organisations it invests in, admits that it will henceforth rate financial resilience far more highly.

It is not only the airport sector that will be watching where that goes with close attention.