Blackstone Group

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The Blackstone Group L.P. is a prominent private equity and management investment firm founded in 1985 by Peter G. Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman. The company is based in New York City, in River House on Park Avenue at Fifty-first Street, with offices in Atlanta, Boston, London, Hamburg, Paris, Mumbai, and Hong Kong.

It is not to be confused with the investment management firm BlackRock, Inc., which was founded by Blackstone, but sold in 1995. Blackstone is a wordplay on the founder's names. Schwarz is German for black and Peter, recurrent both in the name and surname of one of the founders, stands for stone, thus yielding the company's name: Blackstone.

1 Business divisions
2 Recent Activity
3 Notable current and former employees
4 External links
- 4.1 Company datasheet

[edit] Business divisions

Private Equity Group (manages holdings in Allied Waste, Graham Packaging, Celanese, Nalco, Houghton Mifflin, American Axle, Prime Hospitality, and Universal Studios Florida).
Real Estate Group (holds more than 13 million square feet (1.2 km²) of real estate in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.)
Corporate Debt Group
Marketable Alternative Investments (Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, or BAAM), which offers numerous funds of hedge funds, first used only by internal investments, now open to clients.
Private Placements (Raising capital for Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and Real Estate)
Relative Value Fixed Income Investments
Corporate Advisory Services
Restructuring & Reorganization Advisory (clients have included XEROX, Enron, Bally Total Fitness, and Global Crossing).

[edit] Recent Activity

In recent years Blackstone has made significant investments in the hotel and commercial real estate industries by buying and taking private seven large publicly-traded firms:

In March, 2004, its major affiliate, Blackstone Real Estate Partners, paid $1.9B to acquire Extended StayAmerica (ESA). ESA has since been combined with Blackstone's previously-owned Homestead Village brand and rechristened Extended Stay Hotels.

In August, 2004, Blackstone paid $800M to acquire Prime Hospitality. Prime's AmeriSuites brand was quickly sold to Global Hyatt and has since been reborn as Hyatt Place. Thirty seven Wellesley Inns were converted to the Extended StayAmerica brand and the Prime Hotel Saratoga Springs was renamed The Saratoga and joined the LXR Luxury Resorts brand.

In October, 2004, Boca Resorts, Inc. agreed to be sold to Blackstone for $1.25B. Boca Resorts owned and operated five resort properties in Florida that were all transitioned to the LXR Luxury Resorts brand.

In June, 2005, Blackstone acquired Wyndham International for $3.2B. The Wyndham brand and management business was sold to Cendant Corp and 14 full-service Wyndham hotels located primarily in urban locations were sold to Columbia Sussex, a private hotel ownership and management business based outside Cincinnati. The 21 hotels that remained consisted of Wyndham's prized resort assets and included such properties as El Conquistador Resort & Spa in Puerto Rico, The Reach Resort in Key West, FL, and Carmel Valley Ranch in Carmel, CA. These assets were converted to the LXR brand. Summerfield Suites, Wyndham's extended stay offering was sold to Global Hyatt and renamed Hyatt Summerfield Suites.

In January, 2006, Blackstone closed on its $3.4B previously announced acquisition of La Quinta Corporation, an owner, manager, and franchisor of limited service hotels under the La Quinta Inns, La Quinta Inn & Suites, and Baymont Inn brands. In March, 2006 Blackstone announced it would sell the Baymont Inn brand to the Cendant Hotel Group and re-brand Baymont's existing hotels as La Quintas.

In February, 2006, Blackstone announced it would purchase Meristar Hospitality Corporation and its 57 hotel assets for $2.6B. Meristar's additional 10 Florida resorts (which Blackstone announced it would acquire separately several weeks before buying the entire company) were relaunched as members of the LXR brand.

In March, 2006, Blackstone announced it intended to acquire CarrAmerica Realty Trust for $5.6B. CarrAmerica owns stakes in 285 upscale office properties throughout the US.

Since April, 2006, Blackstone is a major shareholder (4.5 %) of Germany's Deutsche Telekom.

In June, 2006, Blackstone entered into a definitive agreement with Cendant Corp to acquire Travelport, its travel distribution services business for about $4.3B in cash. Travelport includes the Orbitz travel reservation website used by consumers, the Galileo computer reservations system used by airlines and thousands of travel agents, Guliver’s wholesale travel business, and numerous other travel related software brands and solutions.

Also in June, 2006, Blackstone teamed up with Canadian property firm Brookfield to acquire US office REIT Trizec Properties. Blackstone and Brookfield valued Trizec at $8.9B

In July, 2006, Blackstone Capital Partners agreed to purchase Encore Medical for $870 million in cash. Encore makes spine, knee, hip and shoulder implants for the orthopedic industry.

In September, 2006, Blackstone lead a consortium buyout of Freescale Semiconductor. The other members of the consortium are the Carlyle Group, Permira Funds and Texas Pacific Group. [1]

In November, 2006, Blackstone agreed through its affiliate, Blackstone Real Estate Partners, to acquire billionaire Sam Zell's Equity Office Properties Trust, for approximately $36 billion. Goldman, Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and a few others acted as financial advisors to Blackstone in the deal. Equity Office is the nation’s largest publicly held office building owner and manager with a total office portfolio consisting of whole or partial interests in 580 buildings comprising 108.6 million square feet in 16 states and the District of Columbia. The acquisition is the biggest takeover of a real estate company and the largest private equity deal in history.[2]