Blackstone’s infrastructure fund has hired Jonathan Kelly from Brookfield Infrastructure to lead and put together a European team and to source investment opportunities across the region.

Blackstone Infrastructure Partners (BIP) said the former managing partner and head of Europe for Brookfield will join its London office on 6 April as a senior managing director and head of European infrastructure.

At Brookfield, Kelly was the global CIO for utilities and data infrastructure. Earlier in his career, he also worked at CIBC World Markets in its power and utilities group.

Sean Klimczak, global head of infrastructure at Blackstone, said Kelly’s investment track record across a wide range of sectors and his experience leading teams in the region made him “the ideal choice as we seek to grow our presence in the sizeable European infrastructure market”.

BIP was Formed in 2017 and Blackstone announced its first transaction in January last year for the debut open-ended infrastructure fund which has support from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and is seeking to raise $40bn.

At the time of launch, BIP was said to invest in US infrastructure assets.

BIP – which targets all infrastructure sectors, including transportation, energy, communications and water and waste – raised $14bn at inaugural close in July last year.

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