Nigerian-American billionaire Adebayo Ogunlesi meets Uzbekistan's president to expand BlackRock's investments

Adebayo Ogunlesi, the Nigerian-born billionaire who runs BlackRock's infrastructure arm and sits on its board, met Uzbekistan's president this week to discuss expanding the asset manager's investments in the country, with energy the main focus.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev received him on Monday. In a readout from his office, the government said the two focused on the fuel and energy sector and reviewed BlackRock's existing projects in the country.

Mirziyoyev set out where he wants BlackRock to do more. According to the statement, he pointed to faster privatisation, a friendlier climate for investors, a deeper financial sector, new petrochemical plants and joint work on artificial intelligence.

Ogunlesi ranks among the most prominent Africans in global finance. Known in Nigeria as the man who bought Gatwick Airport, he built a small fund into the world's largest independent infrastructure investor, sold it to BlackRock, and now helps direct where one of the most powerful firms in finance puts its money.

BlackRock manages more than $12 trillion, and infrastructure has become one of its main growth areas. The firm has raised tens of billions of dollars for the sector since folding in Ogunlesi's business. His unit buys airports, ports, pipelines, power stations, water systems and data centers, long-life assets that generate steady returns over decades. Governments in fast-growing economies compete to attract that kind of capital.

Uzbekistan has been chasing it for years. A doubly landlocked country of about 37 million people, it spent decades as one of the world's most closed economies until Mirziyoyev took power in 2016 and began opening it up. He floated the currency, sold state assets, moved to list state companies on a small domestic stock market, and positioned the country to Western investors as a reformer in a region long dominated by Russia and China.

BlackRock is among the names the government wants to anchor that effort. The firm has been building ties with Tashkent, which counts it among the marquee investors it hopes will lead its privatisation drive. Monday's talks pointed to a broader relationship spanning energy, petrochemicals and technology.

Artificial intelligence was part of the discussion, and Ogunlesi has a direct link to the field. He sits on the board of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and BlackRock has been raising large sums to build the data centers and power plants that AI depends on, the kind of infrastructure his unit specialises in. Uzbekistan flagged AI investment as one of its priorities.

Ogunlesi's path is unusual for the upper reaches of global finance. The son of Nigeria's first professor of medicine, he studied at Oxford and Harvard, clerked for United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, then spent 23 years at Credit Suisse running its global investment bank before leaving in 2006 to start Global Infrastructure Partners.

The firm made its name buying large, hard assets. It acquired London City Airport in 2006, took a majority of Gatwick in 2009 for about 1.5 billion pounds, and later added Edinburgh Airport and Italy's high-speed rail operator. By the time BlackRock moved in, it managed more than $100 billion across energy, transport, digital infrastructure and water.

BlackRock bought the business in 2024 for about $12.5 billion, paying $3 billion in cash and roughly 12 million of its own shares. The deal handed Ogunlesi around 1.8 million of those shares and $600 million in cash, and lifted his net worth past $1 billion. Forbes now estimates his fortune at about $2.5 billion.

It also gave him a place at the top of the firm. Ogunlesi is a senior managing director at BlackRock, a member of its global executive committee and a director on its board, standing that few Africans hold in global finance. He also sits on the boards of Topgolf Callaway and the oil explorer Kosmos Energy.

He has been involved in politically sensitive deals as well. In 2025, a BlackRock-led group that included GIP agreed to buy dozens of ports from Hong Kong's CK Hutchison, a portfolio of more than 40 terminals across some 23 countries, among them two at either end of the Panama Canal. The transaction drew support in Washington and objections from Beijing, placing Ogunlesi in a wider contest over control of global trade routes.

The Uzbekistan meeting reflects a broader trend. Central Asian governments have been courting well-known Western investors, and BlackRock has been pursuing infrastructure deals across emerging markets, with each side treating the other's involvement as a signal that draws further investment.

Neither side announced new commitments or figures, and the only account of the meeting came from Mirziyoyev's office, so the talks appeared aimed at direction rather than firm agreements. Still, the meeting underscored Ogunlesi's standing, with a head of state receiving the Nigerian lawyer turned banker turned investor who now represents the largest pool of managed money in the world.