Blackstone Announces Acquisition of Aon’s Technology-Enabled Benefits & HR Platform
February 10 2017 - 6:02AM
Business Wire
Blackstone and Aon to Work Together on Behalf
of Shared Clients and Prospects; Aon to Remain Economically Aligned
with Business’ Future Performance
Blackstone (NYSE:BX) today announced that private equity funds
affiliated with Blackstone have entered into a definitive agreement
to acquire Aon plc’s (NYSE:AON) technology-enabled benefits and
human resources (“HR”) platform, currently part of Aon Hewitt, for
cash consideration of up to $4.8 billion, including $4.3 billion at
closing and additional consideration of up to $500 million based on
future performance.
The business is the largest benefits administration platform in
the United States, and a leading services provider for cloud-based
HR management systems. It serves approximately 15 percent of the
U.S. working population across more than 1,400 companies. Aon and
the new, stand-alone company will continue to work together on
behalf of shared clients and prospects.
Peter Wallace, a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, said,
“We are excited to acquire a world-class leader of scale in health,
retirement, and HR services, providing critical human resources and
benefits administration services to millions of employees and their
families throughout the United States and Canada. Blackstone sees
tremendous opportunity for investing in leading businesses within
the technology-enabled services sector, where we believe there is a
significant opportunity to accelerate future growth. We look
forward to working with the excellent management team to continue
to invest in and grow the company.”
David Kestnbaum, a Managing Director at Blackstone, said,
“Through this investment and partnership, we will seek to leverage
our global relationships, operational support, and strong capital
base to accelerate growth in the business. We are pleased to invest
in this market leading business that provides an important suite of
services to a broad range of blue-chip clients. Our focus will be
on ensuring continued delivery of best-in-class services to
clients, while also innovating new service lines and strategies to
expand the company’s capabilities.”
Aon plc, President & CEO Greg Case said, “This transaction
sharpens our focus on growing our core professional services
capabilities and accelerates our ability to invest in emerging
client needs, while ensuring that clients continue to receive the
level of service and performance they have come to expect. We
believe that this platform will thrive under Blackstone’s ownership
as a focused, standalone company and look forward to working with
the expert management team in place to support our shared clients
and prospects.”
Aon’s Chris Michalak, CEO of the new, standalone business said,
“The opportunity before us is tremendous. Under new ownership with
Blackstone, our clients will benefit from increased focus,
innovation and investment in our already market-leading benefits
and HR administration solutions. I am excited to lead our team of
22,000 colleagues forward into this new era with Blackstone.”
Citigroup, Credit Suisse, and SMB Capital are acting as
financial advisors to Blackstone with respect to the transaction,
and Kirkland & Ellis LLP is acting as Blackstone’s legal
counsel. Morgan Stanley is acting as financial advisor to Aon with
respect to the transaction, and Sidley Austin LLP is acting as
Aon’s legal counsel. Debt financing related to the transaction is
being provided by BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse,
Citigroup, Macquarie, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley.
The transaction is expected to close by the end of the second
quarter of 2017.
About Blackstone
Blackstone is one of the world’s leading investment firms. We
seek to create positive economic impact and long-term value for our
investors, the companies we invest in, and the communities in which
we work. We do this by using extraordinary people and flexible
capital to help companies solve problems. Our asset management
businesses, with over $360 billion in assets under management,
include investment vehicles focused on private equity, real estate,
public debt and equity, non-investment grade credit, real assets
and secondary funds, all on a global basis. Further information is
available at www.blackstone.com. Follow Blackstone on Twitter
@Blackstone.
About Aon
Aon plc (NYSE:AON) is a leading global provider of risk
management, insurance brokerage and reinsurance brokerage, and
human resources solutions and outsourcing services. Through its
more than 72,000 colleagues worldwide, Aon unites to empower
results for clients in over 120 countries via innovative risk and
people solutions.
For further information on our capabilities and to learn how we
empower results for clients, please visit:
http://aon.mediaroom.com.
Follow Aon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Aon_plc
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170210005263/en/
MEDIA:For Blackstone:Paula Chirhart,
+1-212-583-5011paula.chirhart@blackstone.comorFor Aon:Donna
Mirandola, +1-312-381-1532donna.mirandola@aon.com
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