Steve Schwarzman is selling state secrets to the Chinese. Is Schwarzman trying to pull a Jack Bauer's father in last season of 24 (Schwarzman is the only PE fund guru as "tall" as Keifer Sutherland, after all)?
For the low, low price of $540 million dollars, or a nice $23 million a day, the Chinese government has been studying the U.S. buyout market, courtesy of Blackstone's IPO. The first lesson is an awfully bitter fortune cookie - PE fund IPOs allow shrewd fund partners to cash out while passing impending turmoil onto investors.
China used its increasingly hard to employ $1 trillion "rainy day fund" of foreign exchange holdings to pump money into a 10% stake in Blackstone's IPO. China bought shares at a 4.5% discount and watched Blackstone's share price fall 18% in 24 trading days.
China is watching patiently, slowly developing the script for taking the PE reigns from the West, and the script for "Shaolin PE Investing," starring Stephen Chow.
(Pictured: Some Chinese investors have lost their shirts in the deal, others just have an axe to grind.)
Blackstone share slump costs China $540 million [MarketWatch via Deal Journal]
Posted by Random Banker, Jul 31, 2007 10:45AM
How dyslexic is Dealbreaker? Does Dealbreaker ever post something without reversing the numbers from article being referenced? Dealbreaker would make a sub-par analyst at best ($450 vs. $540... its only $110mn no biggy)