Blackstone (BX) was founded with $500,000 in 1985 by two Lehman partners after a civil war at the I-bank forced its sale to American Express. BX had a meteoric rise from a small LBO boutique in Manhattan to the world’s first true alternative asset management colossus with $1 trillion in AUM.

I have rhapsodized about Blackstone in the Gulf/UK media ever since its shares fell from its catastrophic IPO price of 32 at the height of the credit bubble to its GFC lows in 2011 when the shares traded well below $8 and offered a 12% distribution yield.

Blackstone’s empire encompasses private equity, credit/insurance, real estate and hedge fund of funds. The firm has assembled the finest collection of deal makers, strategists, fund/risk managers and credit analysts I have ever seen on Wall Street. The AUM has grown from $730 billion in fee assets to $1 trillion in a mere six months, thanks to BX’s economies of scale, diversified product offering, stellar track record and vast status as the largest real estate investor in the world, a franchise built by my former Penn/Wharton classmate Jonathan Gray since 1992.