Blackstone Group Description

New York-based Blackstone Group is a Wall Street investment and financial services firm that had $94.56 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2008. ^{8 9}

Employees: Blackstone had almost 550 investment and advisory professionals and 90 senior managers at its New York headquarters and offices in Atlanta, Beijing, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Menlo Park, Mumbai, Paris, San Francisco and Tokyo as of December 31, 2008.¹⁰

Business Model: Blackstone is an asset management and financial services firm. The company is organized into four segments:¹¹

1. Private Equity: Blackstone purchases stakes in companies by assembling large amounts of capital from large investors, who in turn profit from Blackstone’s investments.¹² In most cases, Blackstone purchases a controlling interest in a company, reorganizes it, often replaces the upper-management, and provides the company with additional capital and resources to make it more profitable. For additional detail, see next page.
2. Real Estate: Blackstone buys, sells, and manages large real estate developments and other real estate companies, including hotel and healthcare companies. It raises money from large investors in order to purchase property and later returns a portion of the profits from its properties to the investors.
3. Alternative Asset Management: Blackstone manages a variety of financial products such as mutual funds and hedge funds.
4. Financial Advisory Services: Blackstone advises and assists large corporations during mergers, acquisitions, and major reorganizations.

Recent Stock Performance: Blackstone went public on June 22, 2007,¹³ selling approximately 10 to 15 percent of the company.¹⁴ The firm’s stock price fell as low as 90 percent below the price for which it sold during the initial public offering (IPO), mostly due to significant markdowns in the value of its real estate and private equity holdings. Blackstone’s stock price has since begun to recover slightly.¹⁵

Sithe Global (Can this be hyperlinked to our Sithe Global at a Glance page?) is just one of Blackstone’s approximately 130 private equity investments in different companies.

• A list of the approximately 130 companies that Blackstone is invested in or has invested in is available at: http://www.blackstone.com/private_equity/corp_pe/portfolio.asp?Order=ByTransactionSize.
• Other Blackstone investments include Foundation Coal, Harrah’s, Sirius Radio, Six Flags, Hilton, as well companies involved in hotels, funeral homes, telecommunications, waste management, publishing, technology, entertainment, manufacturing, and energy companies, among others.¹⁶

Lobbying and Legal Activities

In 2008, Blackstone spent $3,502,500 on lobbying efforts, with $320,000 of that total dedicated to lobbying on issues for Sithe Global.¹⁷ In the first quarter of 2009, Blackstone spent a total of $205,000 on lobbying, with $60,000 dedicated to Sithe Global.¹⁸ The lobbying firm hired to represent Sithe is Ogilvy Government Relations.¹⁹ Although Blackstone owns or invests in other energy companies, in 2007, 2008, and in the first quarter of 2009, Blackstone’s only energy-related lobbying efforts were for Sithe Global.²⁰

Sithe retains the law firm Bracewell and Giuliani to represent its legal interests surrounding the Toquop project. The spokesman for Sithe regarding the Toquop project is Frank Maisano, an attorney with Bracewell and Giuliani.²¹ Blackstone’s legal expenditures are not publicly available.

Fossil fuel energy investments: Blackstone has invested, or is currently invested, in other fossil fuel energy companies.²² These companies are:

More information on these companies can be found here: http://www.blackstone.com/private_equity/corp_pe/portfolio.asp?Order=ByPortfolioCompany&Sector=Energy

Blackstone Cleantech Venture Partners – Blackstone is making the right decisions (Can this be the caption that links to another page on our website?)

Description: Blackstone is in the process of creating a new division within its private equity segment, Blackstone Cleantech Venture Partners, which is focused on investing in both mature and start-up green technology companies.²⁸ The initiative is prominently featured on their Private Equity webpage, though activity appears to be low.

Activities to date: The new division appears to have only made a small number of investments so far:

• Coskata, Dec. 2008: investment in a cellulosic ethanol company²⁹
• Pacific Biosciences, Nov. 2008: $20 mil investment in a DNA sequencing company (unclear how related to green tech)³⁰

Described key areas include: Renewable electricity generation, food and fuel production, energy efficiency, reduction of emissions from traditional energy sources, and enabling technologies.³¹

Link to The Blackstone Group Investments: http://blackstone.com/private_equity/corp_pe/portfolio.asp?Order=ByInvstDate – This is a great way for people to get involved in the campaign. I think the caption should say something like: Become a Socially Responsible Consumer, find out where The Blackstone Group invests and avoid consuming their products and services. – we had discussed getting this on the website before, so if you had other ideas please feel free to incorporate, i.e. an entire page on our website which people can link to. I really hate sending folks off the website, so this maybe a better plan.

So who are these guys?