Reuters – British Land has sold a 50 percent stake in City of London office complex Broadgate to Blackstone in a deal crafted to thrust the UK real estate firm to the front of the chase for UK property bargains.

The private equity giant has paid just 77 million pounds ($127.5 million) for the half stake in Broadgate, one of London’s biggest office landmarks.

It will also take on half its 1.97 billion pounds debt pile, freeing up British Land to mount a much speculated buying spree as a two-year property slump nears an end.

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Tags: blackstone, real estate firm

Reuters – Pension funds will likely funnel more money into hedge funds and become a powerful engine of growth for the industry in the coming months, a hedge fund industry veteran said on Wednesday.

"We are finding that corporate pension funds are looking at hedge funds for allocations for their equity exposures, said Carrie McCabe, chief executive of Lasair Capital LLC, a firm that creates portfolios of hedge funds for clients.

McCabe, who cemented her reputation in the hedge fund industry while running Blackstone Alternative Asset Management and FRM Americas, described a real urgency to pension funds’ desire to beef up their returns with hedge funds in a hurry.

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Tags: allocations, asset-management, blackstone, capital llc, carrie, chief-executive, corporate pension funds, exposures, hurry, industry veteran, mccabe, money, portfolios, reputation, reuters, urgency

Financial Times – Blackstone marked down the value of billions of dollars worth of debt it bought at a discount from Deutsche Bank to zero, demonstrating that the group bet too early on a recovery.

Blackstone bought the debt in April and marked down the value by the end of the year. The private equity group disclosed the markdown in a conference call on Tuesday with investors, who have grown concerned about the impact the global recession is having on the portfolio companies of private equity firms.

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Tags: billions of dollars, blackstone, conference-call, deutsche bank, financial times, global recession, investors, markdown, portfolio companies, private equity firms, private equity group