The deal to acquire the London-based private capital database provider accelerates BlackRock’s push to become a major player in alternative assets. Fink said indexes and data will ultimately drive “the democratization of all alternatives,” and the Preqin deal is about the ability of data and analytics to broaden access to private assets in the coming years.
“We believe we could index the private markets,” Fink said on a call with investors and analysts on Monday after the New York-based money manager announced the £2.55 billion ($3.2 billion) deal. “Just as index has become the language of public markets, we envision we could bring the principles of indexing even iShares to the private markets.”