How Global Infrastructure Partners turned a sleepy sector into one that has investors clamoring for more
BILL WOODBURN showed up for dinner as a courtesy.
It was 2006, and the former head of General Electric’s infrastructure business and Jack Welch protégé had made up his mind to turn down Adebayo Ogunlesi and Matt Harris, the pair of former Credit Suisse bankers who’d invited him for Chinese food. Instead of joining their nascent fund, the sought-after Woodburn was taking a job with Steve Schwarzman’s Blackstone.
To change his mind, Ogunlesi and Harris opted for a soft sell—a departure from what Woodburn knew from GE, where high-pressure persuasion was the norm. They met at Harris’s favorite Midtown Manhattan restaurant, the now closed Tse Yang. Fish glided through tanks in the background as the three talked about raising kids and collecting classic cars. Ogunlesi and Harris barely mentioned the business of buying ports and pipes or raising money.
The low-key approach impressed Woodburn. By the time he headed to Grand Central Terminal to catch a train back to his Connecticut home, he’d reversed course, to his and his wife’s surprise. “I’d told her, ‘This dinner is a formality,’ ” says Woodburn, 66. “I’m not a guy who changes his mind easily. I’m a square-headed engineer.”
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