Ares declined to comment, while GCP didn’t have an immediate comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.
The firms had been discussing a deal that would feature a roughly US$3.5 billion ($4.56 billion) upfront payment, with the total value climbing to around US$5 billion over time if certain targets are hit, Bloomberg has reported.
GCP has about US$66 billion of assets under management outside China, spread across Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, the US and Brazil. Ares CFO Jarrod Phillips has said that the firm could grow in Asia through acquisitions, and also sees opportunities to expand in infrastructure equity.
Alternative asset managers are pursuing mergers to gain scale and expand into new sectors and geographies, turning into one-stop shops offering a range of investment strategies. The deal would expand Ares’s business in one of Wall Street’s hottest areas: infrastructure.
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GCP has made bets on data centres and renewable energy just as investors look to ride on demand for infrastructure and resources to power what they hope will be an artificial intelligence boom.
GCP has traditionally invested in areas such as real estate tied to logistics, digital infrastructure and renewable energy. The firm grew out of Singapore-based GLP, a developer and operator of warehouses that has benefitted from the boom in e-commerce.
GLP set up a fund management arm to invest third-party money in the sector, and it became a separate entity — GLP Capital Partners — after a series of transactions in 2022.
