BlackRock hires risk team in ‘response’ to MGPA buy

The Risk and Quantitative Analysis group of the New York asset management behemoth has hired directors for Asia and Europe in response to its acquisition of private equity real estate firm MGPA last year.

BlackRock, the global asset management business with almost $3.8 trillion of assets under management, has made a pair of hires aimed at assessing the risks undertaken by its real estate business in Asia and Europe.

Marco Weber joins from Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing (MSREI) next month. He will be based in Hong Kong and is responsible for risk management of BlackRock’s real estate activities in Asia. At MSREI, he was a vice president in its acquisitions team. Earlier this month, Christian Weber, no relation, joined from Germany’s Hypothekenbank, where he was a senior credit analyst. He has similar duties but for BlackRock’s European real estate activities.

Both Webers will report directly to Sally Gordon, the division’s managing director responsible for its real estate activities, who is based at BlackRock’s headquarters in New York. She told PERE the hires were made as a response to BlackRock’s acquisition of Asia- and Europe-focused private equity real estate firm MGPA last year, a deal which more than doubled the value of BlackRock’s real estate assets under management to approximately $25 billion and expanded its geographical reach beyond the US. It also saw the firm venture from core-like investments to value-added and opportunistic investments.

BlackRock’s Risk and Quantitative Analysis group is an independent group within the asset manager that oversees the risk management for all of its various investment activities. It is not beholden to any of its particular businesses, reporting instead directly to BlackRock’s president Robert Kapito and chief executive officer Laurence Fink.