The largest asset manager in the world, Blackrock, is to expand its cooperation with the iCapital Network platform.
BlackRock and iCapital Network are expanding their existing relationship to increase accessibility to private market investments for wealth managers across the EMEA, APAC and Latam regions, the companies said in a press release Tuesday.
They said the partnership would focus on the distribution of global private market funds, as well as the ELTIF, an increasingly important vehicle for the distribution of private markets in Europe. The ELTIF is a pan-European regime for alternative investment funds allowing investors to put money into companies and projects that need long-term capital, for example, infrastructure projects.
Growing Demand from Private Investors
The companies said one of the reasons for the move was that while the global market for alternative investments was over $10.7 trillion, with a growth of 9.8 percent forecast by 2025, individual investor allocations had historically lagged those of institutional investors.
However, over the next several years, individual investor appetite was expected to increase driven by low-interest rates diminished return expectations in public markets, and demand for greater diversification in portfolios to counterbalance higher market volatility.
Strategic Investor
This latest cooperation between Blackrock and iCapital Network is an expansion of the relations between them. Blackrock is a long-term, strategic investor in iCapital Network and uses its technology to optimize access to Blackrock’s private market funds for wealth managers.
iCapital Network’s international expansion is being led from Zurich under the aegis of Marco Bizzozero, a former Unicredit manager and head of Deutsche Bank’s Swiss unit. The firm just recently opened an office in Hong Kong, as finews.asia reported.
