Blackstone Inc. is launching a private-markets fund for retail clients outside the US, as alternative money managers jockey to court investors worldwide beyond large institutions.
The Blackstone Private Markets Fund — the firm’s first multi-asset strategy for non-US individuals — expects to allow quarterly withdrawals of as much as 3% of the fund’s net asset value, according to investor materials and a statement from the firm Thursday.
The fund will invest about half of its capital in Blackstone’s private equity vehicle, which has backed AI giants SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI. The rest of the so-called perpetual fund, which has no fixed end date, will go to infrastructure, real estate and private credit strategies managed by Blackstone.
The firm’s latest offering, dubbed BXPM, builds on the money manager’s aggressive push to capture some of the trillions of dollars held by individual investors worldwide. Global wealth rose nearly 11% in US dollar terms last year, with the strongest increase in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, according to a June report from UBS Group AG.
Blackstone oversaw about $324 billion in its wealth unit as of June 30, about a quarter of its total assets. It joins peers such as Apollo Global Management Inc. and KKR & Co. that have launched perpetual funds, which are tailored for individuals rather than big institutions like pensions and endowments.
Such funds typically allow periodic withdrawals, though sometimes firms limit redemptions.
This year, Blackstone and a slew of other firms curbed withdrawals for some private credit funds after retail investors attempted to flee en masse amid signs of possible distress in the asset class. Blackstone’s real estate fund for wealthy individuals was also hit with a wave of redemption requests starting in 2022; it recorded net inflows for the first time since then in March.
In investor materials for BXPM, the firm said the quarterly redemption expectation isn’t guaranteed and cautioned: “This product is subject to the risk of capital loss.”
Blackstone’s global head of portfolio solutions, Rashmi Madan, has been named chief executive officer of the new fund, which will take initial investments of as little as $10,000.
Written by: Preeti Singh @Bloomberg
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