Blackstone Group's Alight Solutions has agreed to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company backed by investor Bill Foley.
The deal by Foley Trasimene Acquisition Corp would value Alight, a benefits administrator business, at about $7.3 billion including debt, the companies said in a statement Monday.
Based in Lincolnshire, Ill., Alight provides human-resource support services such as payroll, health benefits and employee communications for large companies in 188 countries, according to its website. The company was a division of Aon until Blackstone bought it in 2017 in a transaction valued as much as $4.8 billion. Since then, Alight has acquired several other human resources and technology companies.
Alight ranks fifth among defined contribution plan record keepers, with responsibility for $459.2 billion total assets from 185 plan sponsors representing 4.8 million participants, according to Pensions & Investments Research Center data.
In 2019, Blackstone postponed its plans for Alight to raise as much as $800 million in an initial public offering just before final pricing due to market conditions, people familiar with the matter said then.
Mr. Foley, 76, is a veteran investor who's helped build and lead companies including Fidelity National Financial Inc., the largest U.S. title insurance firm. In December, another blank-check firm of his reached a $9 billion deal to take Paysafe Group, the online payments firm backed by Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners, public.
The board of Alight will be composed of eight directors, including three appointed by Mr. Foley, three by Blackstone, Alight Chief Executive Officer Stephan Scholl and one independent director.
