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Kishore Moorjani of Blackstone Group Inc. has resigned from the company after leading the efforts of its opportunistic investment platform in Asia for nine years.
Moorjani, 48, who is Asia responsible for tactical opportunities, will leave the company in June and pursue other interests, a Hong Kong-based spokesperson confirmed. He will be replaced by Menes Chee, a senior partner who will move from the company’s New York headquarters to Hong Kong in February, Blackstone said.
“Kishore has done an incredible job of growing our business into a large and promising region,” David Blitzer, Global Head of Tactical Opportunities, said in an email. “We are delighted that one of our longest-standing and longest-serving Menes partners is taking on this leadership role as we continue to grow” in Asia.
Moorjani is the third senior managing director to leave Blackstone in Asia since last month. Amit Jain, the Mumbai-based partner for his private equity business, will be leaving at the end of this year, and Tim Wang, head of real estate for China, left in December, people familiar with earlier said.
The departures also come as the firm doubles its offering in Asia, seeking to raise at least $ 5 billion for its second region-focused private equity fund.
Under Moorjani’s leadership, the team has deployed more than $ 2 billion across 13 investments in the region over the past seven years. The group expanded its presence in Hong Kong in 2019, hiring two more people to focus on investing in Greater China, including Mike Shang. Daniel Kearns, who is based in Singapore, will also move to Sydney to open an office in Australia.
In 2020, Blackstone Tac Opps made follow-on investments in New Zealand insurer Partners Life, a struggling Indian platform with HDFC Bank Ltd., and Indonesian logistics firm Emergent. These came after initial investments in these platforms from 2016 to 2018.
It also invested $ 150 million in preferred shares of Chinese data center company 21Vianet Group, whose share price has more than doubled since the June investment. He also set aside $ 190 million for a company to build hyperscale data centers in Japan the following month.
Moorjani joined Blackstone in 2012, the year the company established the Tactical Opportunities business to provide flexible capital to high-quality companies with tailored investment structures across asset classes, sectors and types of titles. The division generally focuses on investment ideas that may go beyond the mandates of other Blackstone funds.
Prior to joining Blackstone, Kishore was the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Credit Asia Capital, an Asian special situations investment firm that he established in partnership with the Blackstone Strategic Alliance Fund.
Chee has been with Blackstone since 2009 and was a founding member of the Tac Opps team when the company founded the company in 2012.
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