Ares, and GLP Capital Partners, also known as GCP, are set to announce a transaction as soon as Tuesday, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

Representatives for Ares and GCP declined to comment.

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 Pte Ltd, 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.

GLP’s dollar perpetual bond climbed more than three cents on the dollar on Tuesday, the biggest jump in three weeks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The note climbed to 70 cents, the highest since 2022, the data show.

The firms had been discussing a deal that would feature a roughly US$3.5 billion (RM15.01 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 chief financial officer 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’ business in one of Wall Street’s hottest areas: infrastructure. 

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. 

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