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Blackstone Group is a global asset manager and a provider of financial advisory services; however, it's known primarily for its Private Equity (PE) business.

The $31 a share IPO which opened on June 22, 2007, valued Blackstone at $33.48 billion which is about a third of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s market value and around three-quarters
of that of Lehman Brothers. During the IPO 12.3% stake was offloaded. The IPO mopped up around $3.48 billion for Blackstone and a separate deal to sell around 10% stake to China added $3 billion to IPO proceeds.

The Blackstone IPO had great names of financial markets as its underwriters, like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, which have the option to buy 20 million more shares on top of 133.3 million already sold through IPO. That would mean an additional $620 million in Blackstone's kitty.

Blackstone co-founders, Stephen Schwarzman, 60, and Peter Peterson, 81, earned $2.4 billion between them from the IPO. Schwarzman's 23% stake in the company is worth $7.74 billion alone. However after the IPO, Pete Peterson now holds just 4% of the equity.

Brief Profile of Blackstone

Mr. Schwarzman and Mr. Peterson founded Blackstone with $400,000 in 1985 after leaving top posts at Lehman. Initially started as a merger advisory boutique, Blackstone grew into a private equity giant with more than $78.7 billion under management as of March 1, 2007. Based in New York, the firm has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Paris, Mumbai and Hong Kong.

The assets under management (as of March 1, 2007) and net income before tax (for year ended December 31, 2006) has been shown in Table 1.

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* Contributed by: -
Vijay Singh Poonia,
PGDM 2007-09,
IIM Calcutta,
Has work experience of 3 years with Indian Oil Corp Ltd.