As I posted earlier this month, Blackstone Group's CEO Stephen Schwarzman gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal with a compelling theme -- Schwarzman is the Napoleon of private equity. Napoleon-watch tracks his moves on the business battleground.

Yesterday I predicted that The Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) would close its first day of trading at $90 a unit. Instead, it's currently trading up a mere 14.9% from its offering price of $31.

It's a bit silly I realize to say that an IPO is disappointing which leaves its CEO worth about $8 billion. But there are a couple of reasons why this modest first day rise bodes poorly for the stock and sector:

Continue reading Napoleon-watch: Blackstone's disappointing debut

Napoleon-watch: Blackstone's disappointing debut originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 22 Jun 2007 12:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It must be something in the water, but Blackstone Group LP's workers produce nine times the profit as their counterparts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS), according to an analysis by Bloomberg News.

Blackstone's 770 workers produced an average of $2.95 million in net income last year compared with $360,000 at Goldman Sachs which has about 31,000 workers, Bloomberg says. This raises some interesting questions about how the market will value the New York-based hedge fund company.

If investors value it like Goldman, it will trade at about 10 times earnings with a market capitalization of $23 billion while a Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG) multiple would value Blackstone at about $29 billion, Bloomberg News says. Goldman's market capitalization is $87 billion and Fortess Investment Group's is $37 billion.

Blackstone, though, will trade at a premium to both companies -- at least at first -- because its performance has been amazing over the past few years.

Continue reading Blackstone's workers generate nine times as much profit as Goldman's

Blackstone's workers generate nine times as much profit as Goldman's originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.