Blackstone collects so much money that Stephen Schwarzman does not return – Quartz



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It is unlikely that you will find out what you feel by accumulating 126 billion dollars.

Is it like receiving an unexpected gift? The first bite of ice? To be deliriously drunk?

One of the few people to be able to talk about this experience today has revealed what it is like to acquire a sum of money roughly equivalent to the annual GDP of Ukraine. In an interview with Bloomberg, Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, the largest private equity firm in the world, said it was quite something.

In the first quarter of 2019, Blackstone raised $ 43 billion, bringing its inflows in the last 12 months to $ 126 billion. According to Schwarzman, this "remarkable money collection" was "an extracorporeal experience". So maybe it's more like seeing the manna descend from the sky, or stumbling into a magic money tree in full bloom.

By the end of March, Blackstone's total assets had crossed the half-trillion dollar threshold to $ 512 billion. (In other words, it's five years of Ecuador's annual economic output, or about one of Thailand's years.) Blackstone's steady growth in assets under management reflects all of its business activities. private fundraising, with 2019 in the process of breaking records after recession. Blackstone is raising what is believed to be the largest buyback fund in history, eclipsing the $ 24.7 billion Apollo fund that closed in 2017.

The company also announced today that it would transition from a partnership to a corporation. During a teleconference, Schwarzman told investors that the current structure of Blackstone "simply makes the stock too difficult to appropriate." The limited partnership status allows it to evade certain tax obligations, but introduces complexities for mutual fund managers wishing to purchase Blackstone shares on behalf of retail investors. . (Rival KKR was converted from a partnership to a partnership last year.) At the time of writing, Blackstone's shares were up about 8%.

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