Brian Chase joins BlackRock

Former Campbell Lutyens partner Brian Chase has joined BlackRock as a managing director in its alternative solutions group.

Chase, who began working for BlackRock in December, spent more than six years at Campbell Lutyens, a London-based placement agent, becoming a partner in 2015. Before beginning at the company in 2010, Chase was a vice-president of infrastructure at the Carlyle Group and later worked for the World Bank.

BlackRock’s alternative solutions group manages portfolios of alternative investments, including private equity, infrastructure, energy, private debt, real estate and opportunistic assets, for large institutional clients. Chase will continue to be based out of New York.

BlackRock, which declined comment on the hire, was aggressive in adding senior staff in 2016, hiring Jonathan Stevens to head its European infrastructure debt team and Pat Eilers as managing director of its infrastructure equity unit. The firm also brought on Mark Wiseman as a senior managing director and a member of its global executive committee. At the beginning of last year, BlackRock launched its real assets unit, combining its infrastructure and real estate platforms under a single umbrella.

“Combining our real estate and infrastructure units creates critical mass – a global business with $29 billion in assets and 320 people – which will make us more effective at growing the business,” Jim Barry, BlackRock’s head of new assets, told Infrastructure Investor in a March 2016 keynote interview.