Private Equity - Blackstone

Overview

Our corporate private equity operation, established in 1987, is a global business with 94 investment professionals and offices in New York, London, Mumbai and Hong Kong. We are a world leader in private equity investing, having managed five general private equity funds as well as one specialized fund focusing on communications-related investments. From an operation focused in our early years on consummating leveraged buyout acquisitions of U.S.-based companies, we have grown into a business pursuing transactions throughout the world and executing not only typical leveraged buyout acquisitions of seasoned companies but also transactions involving start-up businesses in established industries, turnarounds, minority investments, corporate partnerships and industry consolidations, in all cases in strictly friendly transactions supported by the subject company's board of directors. In total, our corporate private equity operation has raised approximately $36 billion in capital since 1987. As of June 30, 2007, our corporate private equity operation had approximately $31.8 billion of assets under management.

From 1987 through June 30, 2007, our corporate private equity funds have invested in approximately 113 companies in a variety of industries and geographies in pursuit of their investment objectives. The total enterprise value of all transactions effected by our corporate private equity operations through June 30, 2007 was over $199 billion. As of June 30, 2007, our corporate private equity funds had significant equity investments in 44 different companies.

http://www.blackstone.com/private_equity/index.html

Investment Approach

We have a rigorous investment approach, extensive due diligence focus, global reach, substantial transaction and financing expertise and focus on operational oversight. The following are some of the core investment principles of our corporate private equity funds.

Large Capitalization Focus
Large-capitalization buyouts are often the most difficult transactions to analyze and execute, given their complexity and geographic scope and the size of the equity investment required. Large-capitalization buyouts often involve more stable and higher quality companies tend to attract more capable and deeper management teams and yield more options for growth, repositioning, cost reduction and exit. Given our global reach, our network of skilled former senior corporate executives, the size of our capital pool and the depth of our transaction and financing expertise, we believe that we are one of a limited number of firms favorably positioned to participate in this large-capitalization market, which has been the fastest growing segment of the buyout industry. These favorable competitive dynamics and our capabilities and organizational strengths make large-capitalization buyouts particularly compelling opportunities for us.

Corporate Partnerships
Corporate partnership transactions, transactions in which we invest capital alongside a major corporation, represent a signature form of private equity investing for us. As of June 30, 2007, we had invested approximately $5.8 billion of equity capital, or approximately 27% of total corporate private equity capital invested by Blackstone since 1987, in 42 corporate partnerships. These have included transactions with AT&T Inc., General Electric Company, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Sony Corporation, Time Warner Inc., Union Carbide Corporation, Union Pacific Corporation, USX Corporation and Vivendi SA. As corporations increasingly return to the mergers and acquisitions market, we believe this strategy will lead to a significant number of investment opportunities for our corporate private equity funds over the next several years. We believe that teaming up with corporate partners enables us to benefit from access to their knowledge base and anticipated synergies and to compete more effectively against other bidders.

Sector Expertise
Our corporate private equity investment professionals have expertise in all major industries. In addition, we have access to the sector expertise of a broad array of former senior corporate executives with whom we have established informal and formal proprietary advisory relationships and who work closely with our private equity professionals, helping us to source and analyze potential investment opportunities.

Out-of-Favor, Under-Appreciated Industries
We tend to be a contrarian private equity investor. We try to avoid being influenced by swings in conventional wisdom about the relative attractiveness of industries. Instead, we seek to identify out-of-favor, under-appreciated industries, and we have successfully invested in industries such as rural telephony, oil refining, commodity chemicals, coal and automotive parts among others when they were generally perceived to be out of favor with the markets. We also try to identify developing industry trends in order to take advantage of them before they become widely appreciated and to pursue opportunities to change the structure and profit potential of specific industry sectors through consolidation.

Global Scope
We believe that private equity investing outside the United States provides attractive opportunities, and we are therefore pursuing private equity opportunities throughout the world. In Europe, in addition to our hub office in London, we rely on senior advisors who reside in various European countries to assist our London-based private equity professionals. We plan on using a similar approach to expand our reach in the greater China region and other Asian countries with our new office in Hong Kong, as well as in India with our office in Mumbai. We believe we are one of a limited number of private equity firms with the advantage of access to a full range of cross-regional opportunities. We also believe our global reach helps us to better assist our portfolio companies in dealing with developments across various regions of the world, sourcing add-on acquisition opportunities, entering new markets and outsourcing operations to reduce costs.

Distressed Securities Investing
We believe that we have a competitive advantage in periods of weaker economic conditions or uncertainty in the debt or equity capital markets. Through our restructuring and reorganization advisory business and our distressed securities hedge fund, we have access to investment opportunities and expertise regarding companies in financial distress that many of our competitors lack. We have often invested in distressed securities when those opportunities have presented themselves, including successful investments in securities of Adelphia Communications Inc., Charter Communications Inc. and three German cable television companies in the last five years.

Significant Number of Exclusive Opportunities
In recent years we have been able to consider and execute a number of transactions that were either presented exclusively to Blackstone or were offered to only a very limited number of private equity firms. We believe this principally resulted from our strong relationships with major investment banks and other financial intermediaries, our extensive network of senior advisors, our leading position in corporate partnership transactions, our ability to avail ourselves of the resources and relationships that reside in all of our firm's different businesses and our ability to arrange the acquisition of very large capitalization companies.

Superior Financing Expertise
We believe that the broad expertise of all aspects of the capital markets—debt, equity, real estate financing, derivatives and commodities—that resides across all of our firm's businesses enables us to obtain a lower cost of capital for our portfolio companies, reduce risk and uncover hidden asset value.

Operations Oversight
Our portfolio management group consists of professionals with significant operating experience who work with our portfolio companies on operating issues. After a portfolio company acquisition is consummated, our portfolio management group typically works with management of the portfolio company and outside advisors to implement a 100-day plan to enhance the company's operations. Each 100-day plan is reviewed and approved by our investment committee. As part of our portfolio company monitoring program, we enlist our senior advisors to assist our portfolio management group and work closely with portfolio companies to help them improve their operating performance. We believe that the experience of our senior advisors and our own portfolio management personnel, combined with the expertise of our investment professionals in assisting portfolio companies with add-on acquisitions, divestitures, financings and other capital markets transactions, help our portfolio companies enhance value. Our focus on assisting our portfolio companies with operational oversight, as well as our ability to attract, motivate and retain superior portfolio company management teams, are critical to the success of our private equity investments. The majority of our investment gains has resulted from increases in the EBITDA of our portfolio companies.

CoreTrust Purchasing Group
We seek to unlock incremental value in our portfolio companies through the use of efficiencies of scale. We have established a group purchasing organization called CoreTrust Purchasing Group. CoreTrust administers a procurement program in which our participating portfolio companies combine their purchasing power to purchase various goods and services at discounted prices to thereby achieve savings that they were previously unable to obtain on their own. We are expanding this program to cover additional types of goods and services, and over time we expect to expand it to include other operational areas such as outsourcing and information technology.

Alignment of Interests
Recognizing the importance of aligning the firm’s interests with those of its investors, Blackstone’s employees own most of the equity of our public entity and the firm and its employees have invested substantial capital in Blackstone’s corporate private equity funds.

http://www.blackstone.com/private_equity/investment.html