BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager by value, has hired Brent Elkins from private equity real estate firm Colony Capital, to help spearhead its capital raising efforts.
PERE understands that the firm, which manages approximately $4 trillion in assets, hired Elkins as a managing director with a global fundraising remit for BlackRock Real Estate, its real estate investment management division which last month confirmed it is buying Asia and Europe focused private equity real estate firm MGPA.
Elkins will report to both Jack Chandler, BlackRock Real Estate’s global head, and to Edwin Conway, BlackRock’s head of Institutional Global Client Group. He is expected to start in the new role next week and he will be working from Boston where he currently resides.
One major part of his role is expected to be raising capital for MGPA’s latest Europe and Asia opportunity funds which will come under the BlackRock banner when the acquisition completes later this year.
At the point of sale, MGPA was in the market raising its fourth European opportunity fund, MGPA Europe IV, for which it was targeting €1 billion. To date, it had officially closed on $100 million. In Asia, the firm had just finished investing its $3.9 billion MGPA Asia Fund III, the largest commingled private real estate fund ever raised for Asia, and was understood to be readying for a fourth fund. That vehicle was expected to attract between $2 billion and $3 billion from investors.
Elkins’ career has majored on raising capital for value-added and opportunistic funds. He joined Colony Capital in 2009 where he was a senior vice president and co-led the firm’s fundraising and was a main point of contact for its investors on all aspects of capital formation across its various business lines.
Before Colony, he was an executive director of the Real Estate Private Capital Markets group at Morgan Stanley. He original joined Morgan Stanley’s investment banking division in 1996. He also had a spell at AMB Capital Partners between 2002 and 2007 where he was a portfolio manager as well as head of the firm’s global fundraising. He started his career with Trammell Crow Company in 1990.
Elkins was unavailable for comment.
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