Fortress Investment Group, the first major US hedge fund and private equity group to go public, on Thursday night priced its IPO at $18.50 a share, the high end of its projected range of $16.50 to $18.50, valuing the company at about $7.4bn. Fortress is selling 34m class A shares in the offering, which raised about $635m. The investment banks managing the deal, including Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, faced a challenge in allocating shares in the IPO after they received requests for more than 925m shares. The valuation represents about 20 times Fortress’ expected 2007 earnings, according to bankers. That is about twice the multiple of Goldman Sachs.
