Blackstone formed its Structured Finance Group, bringing together Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies (BREDS) and the firm’s various asset-backed finance activities.
The new global head of the group is Jonathan Pollack, currently the global head of BREDS. Timothy Johnson who heads up origination for BREDS becomes global head of BREDS, overseeing all commercial and residential lending activities.
The combined group, which also includes Rob Camacho and Mike Wiebolt, is expected to further scale in the $731 billion Blackstone’s lending capabilities across asset-backed finance markets, which includes consumer finance, real estate, transportation, trade receivables, fund finance and digital infrastructure.
“This team will capitalize on information across asset classes to deliver unique financing solutions to our clients,” said Jon Gray, president and COO at Blackstone. “The time to expand this part of our business has never been better, particularly as we deploy increasing amounts of insurance capital.”
Private credit/insurance solutions saw the greatest inflows in the third quarter, with nearly $20 billion in fresh capital. BCRED raises $3.5 billion of equity capital during the quarter as a continuously offered non-trade BDC. BCRED also had Oct. 1 subscriptions of $1.1 billion not included in this figure. Blackstone’s latest mezzanine/opportunistic strategy had $1 billion of new capital in the quarter. Blackstone also closed three CLOs for $1.6 billion.
“We believe that direct origination of structured credit investments is integral to delivering differentiated performance for our clients,” said Pollack. “We are excited to build upon our greatest strengths – broad sourcing capabilities reinforced by deep relationships, large scale capital, and providing tailored solutions to our borrowers and counterparties.”
Pollack joined Blackstone in 2015 and has been responsible for overseeing the firm’s real estate debt investment strategy. He is also a member of the firm’s real estate investment committee and serves on the board of Blackstone Mortgage Trust.
Prior to joining Blackstone, Pollack was a managing director and global head of Commercial Real Estate, as well as head of risk for Structured Finance, at Deutsche Bank. He joined Deutsche Bank in 1999 from Nomura Group.
