Blackstone's $280 billion real-estate team is buying up everything from warehouses to campus housing to biotech lab space. Here's a look at its power players.

Advertisement
Blackstone's $280 billion real-estate team is buying up everything from warehouses to campus housing to biotech lab space. Here's a look at its power players.
Blackstone; Rachel Mendelson/Insider

Hi, I'm Matt Turner, the editor in chief of business at Insider. Welcome back to Insider Weekly, a roundup of some of our top stories.

Advertisement

On the agenda today:

Let me know what you think of all our stories at mturner@insider.com.


Subscribe to Insider for access to all our investigations and features. New to the newsletter? Sign up here. Download our app for news on the go – click here for iOS and here for Android.


Introducing Blackstone's power players

Investing giant Blackstone is buying up real estate at a rapid rate.

Advertisement

Just this past week, it bet $13 billion on student housing with a deal to buy American Campus Communities. In the past few months, it acquired Australia's Crown Resorts for $6.3 billion, and reinvested in its European logistics real-estate company.

It's working. Blackstone smashed its earnings records earlier this year, largely thanks to its booming real-estate business.

Insider set out to identify the key people driving the land grab, and landed on 17 executives focused on everything from investing in life-sciences office buildings to Hollywood studios to multifamily apartment buildings.

Here, Hana Alberts, one of the editors on the story, gives us a look at the work that went into creating this list.

What prompted you to make this list?

Advertisement

On recent investor calls where Blackstone has reported record earnings, executives like Jon Gray and Stephen Schwarzman chalked them up to the firm's real-estate business. We wanted to identify the influential people leading that division, the largest arm of the private-equity giant, with $280 billion of its $915 billion of assets under management.

Did any of these power players really stand out to you?

I was struck by how Nadeem Meghji, the head of real estate for the Americas, led Blackstone to nab a 49% stake in a cluster of Hollywood studios in June 2020, when the pandemic had thrown the economy for a loop.

I am also amazed by how much these folks can accomplish at young ages. Katharine Keenan became CEO of Blackstone's Mortgage Realty Trust at age 36, and 33-year-old David Levine has been involved with $100 billion in transactions since 2010 and is now cohead of Americas acquisitions.

What are the trends they're keeping an eye on this year?

Advertisement

These leaders are investing in various forms of real estate right now, from apartment complexes in South Florida to college-campus housing. Other hot areas include warehouses (thanks, ecommerce and next-day delivery!) and biotech lab space — but there's a notable lack of investment in major office complexes, another sign of the times.

Read the full story here:

Also read:


The rise of "Zoomtowns"

Blackstone's $280 billion real-estate team is buying up everything from warehouses to campus housing to biotech lab space. Here's a look at its power players.
iStock; Rebecca Zisser/Insider

Zoomtowns, a handful of previously overlooked crannies in the South and Mountain West, have boomed in recent years with an influx of remote-working outsiders. Big-city transplants with big-city paychecks are flooding in — and longtime locals are feeling the squeeze.

Advertisement

Not only are residents being kept out of homebuying, but the rate of displacement is accelerating: Some are being forced to leave their hometowns in pursuit of more affordable housing, or, in some cases, losing their homes altogether.

Read the full story here:


Amazon's physical stores business is struggling to grow

Blackstone's $280 billion real-estate team is buying up everything from warehouses to campus housing to biotech lab space. Here's a look at its power players.
Amazon; Mike Blake/Reuters; Henry Nicholls/Reuters; Leon Neal/Getty; Savanna Durr

Amazon's projection to open 280 Fresh stores in the US by 2022 has turned out to be woefully off, with just 27 Fresh stores open so far. The company's struggle to reach its Fresh store-expansion goals is emblematic of the challenges it's faced in the physical-retail arena.

While Amazon has perfected the art of e-commerce efficiency, it's facing a much tougher reality in the brick-and-mortar space, driven by the high cost of the stores, a dysfunctional internal culture, and tension with Whole Foods. Some employees question whether the company will ever excel in the offline-shopping space.

Advertisement

Read the full story here:

Also read:


Lagging behind peers, ExodusPoint is set on being boringly dependable

Blackstone's $280 billion real-estate team is buying up everything from warehouses to campus housing to biotech lab space. Here's a look at its power players.
Exodus Point; Millennium; Point 72; Citadel; IStock Photo; Vicky Leta/Insider

In 2018, ExodusPoint debuted with $8.5 billion, making it the biggest hedge-fund launch in history. Four years later, the fund can be called both a success and a work in progress.

By many measures, including its ability to raise money and grow, it's proved a raging success. It manages $13.5 billion, with offices around the world and a head count close to 700. But to the extent that a startup fund unique enough to have close to $14 billion in assets in four years can have direct peers, it has trailed both them and the markets.

Advertisement

Read the full story here:


More of this week's top reads:


Sponsored event invite: Humans are hardwired to make decisions based on their values. Join PayPal and best-selling author David Allison on Tuesday, May 3, at noon ET, to learn how values impact consumer expectations, and how to leverage them. Register here.


Plus: Keep updated with the latest business news throughout your weekdays by checking out The Refresh from Insider, a dynamic audio news brief from the Insider newsroom. Listen here tomorrow.


Curated by Matt Turner. Edited by Jordan Parker Erb and Lisa Ryan. Sign up for more Insider newsletters here.

{{}}