Tag Archives: private equity and oil investment

Rich get Richer while “the Others” Hit the Floor

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The potential for capital markets to expand prosperity is the theme of 72-year-old Fink’s latest annual letter to shareholders, which touches on topics ranging from retirement policy to building out the electrical grid. He details two approaches to broadening access: helping current investors reach parts of the market previously restricted to them, and enabling more people to become investors in the first place.

“The country focuses heavily on preventing people from hitting the floor, as we should. But the U.S. needs to put just as much effort into helping people climb to the ceiling—through investing,” Fink wrote….“Assets that will define the future—data centers, ports, power grids, the world’s fastest-growing private companies—aren’t available to most investors,” he wrote. “They’re in private markets, locked behind high walls, with gates that open only for the wealthiest or largest market participants.”

Excerpt from Jack Pitcher, Larry Fink Says Regular Americans Need Private Assets Too, WSJ, Mar. 31, 2025

Loving Oil in Any Way, Shape or Form — Damn Climate Change!

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Many oil assets are ending up in the hands of private-equity (PE) firms. In the past two years alone these bought $60bn-worth of oil, gas and coal assets, through 500 transactions… Some have been multibillion-dollar deals, with giants such as Blackstone, Carlyle and KKR carving out huge oilfields, coal-fired power plants or gas grids from energy groups, miners and utilities. Many other deals, sealed by smaller rivals, get little publicity. This sits uncomfortably with the credo of many pension funds, universities and other investors in private funds, 1,485 of which, representing $39trn in assets, have pledged to divest fossil fuels. But few seem ready to leave juicy returns on the table.

As demand for oil and gas persists while dwindling investment in production limits supply, prices are rising again, boosting producers’ profits….And discounts imposed on “brown” assets by the stock market, linked to sustainability factors rather than financial… create even more pockets of opportunity…The Economist has looked at 8 PE firms that have closed fossil-fuel deals in 2020-2021 The investors in some of their latest energy-flavored vehicles include 53 pension funds, 23 universities and 32 foundations. Many are from America, such as Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the University of San Francisco and the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, but that is partly because more institutions based there disclose pe commitments. The list also features Britain’s West Yorkshire Pension Fund and China Life. Over time, some investors may decide to opt out of funding their portion of fossil-fuel deals.

But a third, yet more opaque class stands ready to step in: state-owned firms and sovereign funds operating in the shadows. Last month Saudi Aramco, the Kingdom’s national oil company, acquired a 30% stake in a refinery in Poland, and Somoil, an Angolan group, bought offshore oil assets from France’s Total. In 2020 Singapore’s GIC was part of the group that paid $10bn for a stake in an Emirati pipeline.

Excerpts from Who buys the dirty energy assets public companies no longer want?, Economist, Feb. 12, 2022