Blackstone has reported inflows of $113bn (£85bn) into its private credit business over the last 12 months, comprising nearly 60 per of the firm’s total during the period.
Overall inflows across the business were $61.6bn in the first quarter 0f 2025, bringing inflows for the last twelve months to $199.1bn. Around $30bn went into its private credit and insurance business in the first quarter, also making up half around half the firm’s total inflows during those three months.
Assets under management climbed 10 per cent to $1.17tn during the quarter.
“There is a profound expansion underway in the traditional model of providing credit to borrowers, which is creating tremendous structural tailwinds for Blackstone,” Jonathan Gray, president and chief operating officer at the firm, said on a conference call today (17 April).
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Blackstone has established the world’s largest third party focused credit business with $465bn across corporate and real estate credit, up more than two and a half fold in the past four years.
“Driving these inflows, as always, is performance,” said Gray, as he added the firm continues “to see outstanding results across both our investment grade and non-investment grade strategies, including direct lending, asset based finance, leverage loans and real estate high yield lending”.
Private credit gave a gross return of 2.7 per cent (2 per cent net) during the first quarter, and gross return of 15 per cent (10.8 per cent net) over the last 12 months.
One of the most exciting opportunities before Blackstone today is in investment grade private credit, Gray said, where its business grew 35 per cent year-on-year to $107bn.
“Here we’re focused on financing the real economy, including energy and digital infrastructure, real estate, commercial and consumer finance, fund finance and other types of asset based credit,” he said.
“Blackstone has scale and reach in these areas, across both debt and equity, which positions us extremely well. We’ve also established numerous contractual relationships and forward flow agreements with banks and other originators, and we expect to do more,” he added.
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In addition, one of the most significant areas of opportunity emerging for Blackstone is with large investment grade rated corporates looking for customised capital solutions.
Two weeks ago, Blackstone announced a $5bn solution for leading Canadian telecom company Rogers, alongside the country’s preeminent pension plans, backed by a minority interest in Rogers’ wireless network infrastructure.
This follows a $3.5bn solution it designed for a natural gas producer in the fourth quarter with respect to their pipeline infrastructure.
“In both cases, we leverage the expansive breadth of our credit platform to create something bespoke for our partner, without taking on any balance sheet exposure at Blackstone,” Gray said.
Since the start of last year, Blackstone has placed or originated $55bn of credits rated A- minus on average for its private investment grade focused clients, which generated nearly 200 basis points of excess spread over comparably rated liquid credits, Gray said.
This activity has been mostly on behalf of insurers, although pensions and other limited partners are starting to explore moving a portion of their liquid fixed income assets to private investment grade credits, he added.
“We believe the potential here is enormous,” Gray said.
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