T. Rowe Price Acquires Oak Hill Advisors For $4.2B

T. Rowe Price Group Inc TROW is acquiring the alternative credit manager Oak Hill Advisors for $4.2 billion.

What Happened: New York City-headquartered Oak Hill Advisors will become T. Rowe Price's private markets platform and the acquisition expands T. Rowe Price into the alternative investment markets. Oak Hill Advisors CEO Glenn August will retain his position and join the board of directors of the new parent company.

As of July 31, Oak Hill Advisors had more than 300 employees and $53 billion of capital under management across its private, distressed, special situations, liquid, structured credit and real asset strategies.

“While we are committed to our long-term strategy to grow our business organically, we have also taken a deliberate and thoughtful approach to considering adding new capabilities through acquisitions that advance our business strategy,” said Bill Stromberg, CEO and chairman of T. Rowe Price's board of directors, who added the acquired company “meets the high bar we have set for inorganic opportunities, and their proven private credit expertise will help us meet our clients' demand for alternative credit.”

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Why It Happened: The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed “people familiar with the matter,” reported that the leadership at Oak Hill Advisors was interested in joining T. Rowe Price because of the latter’s large distribution platforms. As of June 30, Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price had $1.62 trillion in assets under management.

“Joining with T. Rowe Price will better position us to meet the evolving investment needs of clients, as well as the financing needs of companies and financial sponsors, while maintaining our record of measured and thoughtful growth,” said August.

Photo: Glenn August, courtesy of Oak Hill Advisors.