Win McNamee
In a recent article, entitled “Billionaire Investors Buying REITs With Both Hands,” I explained that self-made billionaires Steve Schwartzman and Jon Gray were loading up on real estate investment trusts, or REITs (VNQ). Through their company Blackstone Inc. (BX), they have bought ~$30 billion worth of REITs since the beginning of 2022 and just recently, they announced yet another REIT acquisition (emphasis added):
“We have nearly $200 billion of dry powder to take advantage of dislocation. With stock markets under pressure, we did agree to privatize two public companies in an otherwise muted deployment quarter, including a leading provider of events management software and a logistics REIT in the UK…
“We hold $16 billion of public stock in our private equity and real estate drawdown funds. When markets ultimately stabilize, we are well positioned for an acceleration in realizations.”
This sends a