Tags: Banks, Barclays, Blackstone, Canary Wharf, CIT, Credit Suisse, D.C., Nobel, Oil, Politics, Real Estate, TV, UK
Tags: Allen Stanford, Barclays, Bear Stearns, Blackstone, Bonuses, Bruce Wasserstein, Compensation, Fed, Fraudsters, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hedge funds, law suits, Lazard, Nobel Prize, Starbucks
Tags: Allen Stanford, Blackrock, Blackstone, Careers, Commissions, Ethics, John Thain, Larry Fink, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Politics
Given their disastrous forays into investing in hedge funds not to mention their shaky finances, we wonder what Vikram and Co can possibly be thinking with their apparent decision to still help fund a $200 million hedge fund start-up, along with Blackstone, run by a couple of former Citigroup prop trading guys. Blackstone is sitting on piles of cash, and isn't on government life support, so we have no problem with them ponying up. But Citi? We wonder what Barney Frank et al. will have to say about that. We kind of think it's ridiculous. They need to get their financial house in order before staking others.
By the same token, if we were the hedge fund guys, we'd be more than a little nervous that Citi might have to pull their investment (of an undisclosed size) on short notice. It's not exactly stable money given their own instability.
Tags: Blackstone, Citigroup, Hedge funds
Tags: Blackrock, Blackstone, Citigroup, Hedge funds
A list of hedge funds and other investors who may have gotten bamboozled in the Mark Dreier swindle is found in a grand jury subpoena attached to a court filing made by Dreier's court-appointed receiver Mark Pomerantz. The subpoena requires that any documents pertaining to those funds be produced, so while it doesn't necessarily mean that they all lost money, they're presumably somehow involved (and we'll guess that most of them probably did lose). There are some heavy hitters on the list, including Paulson & Co, Elliott Associates, Davidson, Kempner, Baupost, Sandell Asset Management, Fortress, Perella Weinberg, GSO (Blackstone's alternative investment arm) and Eton Park. Also notable on the list is Verition — run by Amaranth's iceberg hitting captain, Nick Maounis. Did he step in it again and strike yet another iceberg?
Tags: Amaranth, Baupost, Blackstone, Elliott Associates, Eton Park Capital, Fortress, Hedge funds, Legal, Marc Dreier, Perella Weinberg
Is now the time for a private equity turnaround? With the market in turmoil, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman thinks there are tremendous opportunities. He was the focus of a piece in The Economist:
Tags: Blackstone, Credit Crunch, Private equity
If you haven't checked out the WSJ opinion page, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman talks about the financial morass we find ourselves in and and maps out what he thinks are the necessary ingredients for preventing another one. He cites seven principles that should be part of any global financial regulation and monitoring solution: They include a common set of accounting principles, the structuring of the world's major markets along the same lines, full transparency for financial statements, full disclosure of all financial instruments to the regulator, the regulator should have oversight of all financial institutions, getting rid of mark to market accounting for hard to value assets, move to a principles based regulatory system rather than a rules based one because the rules can't keep up with the rapidly changes in the financial system. And wrapping it up, he envisions a "new global organization of regulators".
You can read the piece here.
Tags: Blackstone, Credit Crunch
(click to enlarge)
The Blackstone CEO was quoted at the Super Return Middle East conference in
Dubai after the Treasury’s huge bank equity injection. According to
Bloomberg:
Tags: Blackstone, Charts, Credit Crunch
Steve Schwarzman commented on the market turmoil:
"We are in unprecedented territory
right now," Stephen Schwarzman, asked about the events of the past week,
said at a private equity conference organized by Dow Jones."Seeing a firm basically evaporate like that is unsettling. It’s a tragedy
for the people working there and it is a sign that something is amiss with the
financial system," he said.It was "abundantly clear that the current regulatory structure for
financial institutions doesn’t work well," Schwarzman said."It’s a whole series of different regulators that were created at different
points in times," he said, adding it needed to be simplified and
integrated. There should not be "venue-shopping for regulation," he
said."When you have all of these rules, and companies are in compliance of these
rules, and they’re going out of business, something isn’t right," he said.
Blackstone CEO says financial rules must change – Reuters
Tags: Blackstone, Credit Crunch
Some NY restaurants will go to almost any length to make its customers happy. Take the Four Seasons Grill Room — they’re even happy to fetch food from other restaurants to feed to their own customers — at a nice mark up:
If you don’t want people to come
back, you don’t take care of them." He takes very good care, however, of
…… Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Blackstone’s co-founder,
billionaire Peter Peterson, who likes Chinese food. "If [Peter] wants, I
will send someone to a Chinese restaurant down the block" to pick up his
favorite dishes, Julian says. "But I’ll charge Four Seasons prices, of
course.”
Food Fight! – Page Six Magazine
Tags: Blackstone, Restaurants
The guy who brought Smurfs to America was busted in an extortion attempt of
his son-in-law, a bigwig at Blackstone Group. Stuart Ross, of Aventura
Fla. was charged, along with his lawyer, of attempting to shake down Blackstone
senior managing director David Blitzer for serious cash — to the tune of $11
million. Ross and his lawyer could spend seven years in prison if they’re found guilty. This
Ross guy sounds like a real pill / ingrate / piece of work even after he had
convinced Blitzer to seed a a couple of earlier business ventures.
According to the New York Post:
Tags: Blackstone, Lawsuit, Legal
The chase for distressed debt is getting more and more crowded as Apollo is
the latest to raise money. It’s looking for over $2 billion for new
fund that will buy troubled loans from European banks.
Other players involved in the distressed debt market include Blackstone, which raised a separate $1.3bn (£697m) fund to invest in the area, and Carlyle, which raised $1.35bn.
According to recent figures from Private Equity Intelligence, distressed debt funds raised 38pc more capital in the first six months of the year globally, bringing in a total of $33bn.
Apollo seeks £1.1bn for distressed debt
- Daily Telegraph
Tags: Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle, Distressed, Hedge funds, Private equity
My, how time flies. A year ago, actually a year ago yesterday (6/22), Blackstone went public at $31/ share, popped on day one then it was pretty much all downhill from there. So for strong stomached investors who bought on day one and still hold it, today might be more of an Unhappy Anniversary….
Tags: Blackstone, Charts, IPO
With private equity deals few and far between, Blackstone is delving deeper into the event driven fund business. And they’re looking to further expand their interests in Asia with their most recently announced move. Schwarzman & Co is starting up a unit that will invest in Asian event drivn opportunities indluding those related to mergers and bankruptcies. SAC Capital alum Aaron Nieman will run it:
Blackstone Altius Advisors will be led by
Senior Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer Aaron Nieman, New York-
based Blackstone said in a statement issued through BusinessWire today. The fund
will be based in Hong Kong with employees in Tokyo, Mumbai and New York.“As Blackstone continues to aggressively
seek opportunities within Asia, Aaron and his team will provide additional
investment capability that will bolster our presence in the region,” Antony
Leung, Blackstone’s Greater China chairman, said in the statement.Nieman joined Blackstone from SAC Capital
Management, where he was a managing director in the Canvas Capital Management
unit overseeing merger arbitrage and event-driven investments in Asia- Pacific,
the Blackstone statement said.
Blackstone to Start Asian Event-Driven Fund Business – Blackstone
Tags: Bankruptcy, Blackstone, Distressed, Hedge funds, M&A
Tags: Banks, Blackstone, China, Credit Crunch, Hedge funds, Morgan Stanley
Material girl Madge is reportedly getting paid around $25 million — roughly $15 million for a 90 minute concert and another $10 million for a millionaire’s private party, both in Dubai. According to Gordon Smart of The Sun (UK):
“The negotiations for the tour to stop in
Dubai in November are being finalised and she will get £7.5million for the one
show only. The figure is so big because of her new contract with Live Nation and
the huge funds available from private promoters in Dubai.”Madge signed to the company for £60million
last autumn.And if that wasn’t enough, she is also in
talks to perform at a private party for a mystery punter while she is out there
which will earn her another £5million.
That makes Rod Stewart’s performance at Blackstone CEO’s Steve Schwarzman’s 60th birthday bash sound like a bargain. Stewart was reportedly paid around a million bucks….
Madonna £12m for two gigs – The Sun
Tags: Blackstone, Music
There’s been speculation for months and months — now Leon Black’s Apollo Management is going the IPO route issuing 29.8 million class A shares. Black, and his co-founders, Josh Harris and Mark Rowan, Drexel alums who founded the firm after Drexel imploded, naturally stand to bank large. (But probably not as large as Steve Schwarzman et al banked when Blackstone took their firm public at nearly the top of the market. The shares currently trade privately at around $14 / share on Goldman’s private over the counter exchange (GSTrue). Apollo sold shares in a private transaction to Goldman, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse in a private offering in August at $24/share, so they’re under water. Oops. It’s not clear exactly whose shares will be sold into the offering since the table of "Selling Shareholders" isn’t yet filled in.
In its 406-page securities filing, Apollo
shrugged off worries about an economic downturn and its inability to do
traditional limited buyouts, instead embracing the period as a time of
opportunity. "Investors should understand that we may significantly
increase the pace of investment when the ‘prevailing wisdom’ is to sell and may
decrease the pace of investment or sell large portions of our funds’ portfolios
when the ‘prevailing wisdom’ is to buy," the filing states.The partners at Apollo make a base cash salary of $100,000 a year, but have a
windfall as part of the reorganization of the firm in July in preparation for
capital-raising. Although individual compensation is not yet broken out,
Apollo’s partners will get stock and restricted stock units valued at a total of
$986 million. The firm’s restricted-stock units have long vesting periods of six
years, which is about twice the normal length of such units on Wall Street.
IPO for Apollo Management - Wall Street Journal
Here are some excerpts from the S-1 filing, including shareholdings of the principals:
Tags: Apollo, Blackstone, IPO, Leon Black, Private equity
Could the debt market really be stabilizing? Shortly after the market closed, the Financial Times reported that Citigroup was close to a deal to sell $12 billion in loans to Apollo, TPG and Blackstone….
Tags: Apollo, Blackstone, Citigroup, Credit Crunch
Selective reporting at the New York Times?: Pete Peterson, one of Blackstone Group’s founders, has a beef with the New York Times which profiled him last month in a not so flattering light….
"I’m allegedly the fat cat that
doesn’t pay much taxes or some such thing," Peterson, 81, complains to
Portfolio.com’s Lloyd Grove. "I made it clear to the New York Times that I
pay substantial taxes, but they chose not to print it." Peterson, who
claims he paid 38.7 percent in taxes on last year’s income of reportedly around
$200 million, blames the omission on the Times’ anti-wealth bias. "Somebody
gets a theme, and the theme is that fat cats don’t want to pay more taxes or
don’t care about income inequality, and we ignore some of these obvious facts
which are verifiable as far as my background is concerned."
Blackstone Pete Rips Times – NY Post Page Six
Tags: Blackstone, Private equity
Screw the banks. Blackstone thinks they don’t need them. According to Blackstone President Hamilton James, they’ll find their own sources of cash to fund their LBOs. That’s gonna mean lower fees to Wall Street banks..
The firm is contacting hedge funds and
mutual funds to provide loans for takeovers, James said after a panel discussion
today at the Super Return conference in Munich. Other firms may follow New
York-based Blackstone’s lead, he added.“We’re bypassing the banks,” James said.
“There’s still ultimately demand for this paper out there if you can go
directly to the buyers.”
Tags: Banks, Blackstone, LBO / MBO
 |
The festivities took place at Le Cirque according to Page Six. The Blackstone Group CEO was with his Mrs, Christine. Naturally, stone crabs, Steve’s faves, were on the menu….
Tags: Birthdays, Blackstone
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