Blackstone Group, which manages the world’s biggest buy-out fund, reported a 90% drop in Q4 profit and warned that conditions would remain difficult at least for the rest of this year. The slide in “economic net income”, from $808m to $88m, was slightly worse than analysts expected. Under US accounting principles, which include costs relating to Blackstone’s IPO last year, the company reported a $170m loss, against a $1.18bn profit a year earlier. Blackstone blamed the slide in the credit markets for its performance but announced a dividend of 30 cents a share. Lex says the news is “not all bad” – despite being lumpy, deal fees will get booked over time. Meanwhile, the group’s basic management fees are solid and with AUM rising by 50% to over $100bn, that creates a “valuable revenue stream”.

This entry was posted by Gwen Robinson on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 5:37 and is filed under Capital markets, M&A, Private equity. Tagged with blackstone. Edit this entry.