Blackstone Group, the world’s biggest manager of alternative assets, is starting a mutual fund that will invest in hedge funds, part of an industrywide push to attract assets from individual investors.
Money Management Executive
The fund will be run by Blackstone Alternative Asset Management, or BAAM, the New York-based firm’s hedge funds-of-funds business, Blackstone said today in a statement. Dubbed the Blackstone Alternative Multi-Manager Fund, it will charge fees of 3.25% of assets annually, including a 1.95% management fee, according to a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Blackstone joins peers Carlyle Group and KKR & Co. in starting offerings that can be marketed to individual investors as the leveraged-buyout industry seeks to broaden its client base and win some of the $3.57 trillion Americans have accumulated in their 401(k) retirement plans. Blackstone said it spent the past three years analyzing the market for alternative funds that are liquid, meaning they let investors sell and buy without restrictions.
“If we’re able to get this right, then individual investors with assets that are significantly less than historically invested are going to be able to get access” to alternatives, Tom Hill, BAAM’s chief executive officer, said at Blackstone’s investor day on May 3 in New York.
Money managers that will receive allocations from the mutual fund are Two Sigma Advisers, Cerberus Sub-Advisory I, Credit Suisse Hedging-Griffo Servicos Internacionais SA, HealthCor Management, Caspian Capital, Boussard and Gavaudan Asset Management, Wellington Management Company, Good Hill Partners, BTG Pactual Asset Management U.S., Chatham Asset Management and Nephila Capital Ltd., Blackstone said.
Nephila, a hedge fund, sold a 25% stake of itself to KKR earlier this year.
