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Bloomberg – The victims of Marc Dreier, the New York lawyer charged in a $400 million fraud, included Amaranth Group Inc., Perella Weinberg Partners and Blackstone Group LP’s GSO Capital Partners, U.S. prosecutors said.
Government lawyers identified the firms in a court filing in New York on Feb. 9 as three of the 20 institutions they claim are victims of Dreier’s thefts. Prosecutors didn’t disclose how much it alleges each of the companies lost.
Prosecutors say Dreier, 58, persuaded two hedge funds to give him more than $100 million by falsely claiming he was selling notes issued by Sheldon Solow, a New York developer, at a discount.
Reuters – GSO Capital Partners LP, Blackstone Group’s $25 billion credit hedge fund, is closing its Asia investment desk after failing to find attractive investments in the region, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The four-member team, led by Asia-Pacific head Timothy Donahue, will be relocated to either London or New York, the sources said, adding that GSO’s Asia fund raising team would remain in place.
The sources, who did not want to be identified because the information was not public, said GSO was shutting its Asia desk because there were better debt and credit investment opportunities in the United States and Europe.
Reuters – Blackstone Group LP said on Tuesday it plans to liquidate two hedge funds as a lack of outside investing amid tight credit markets will prevent them from getting big enough to be meaningful to the company.
The private equity firm plans to consolidate its distressed securities fund with GSO Capital Partners, a hedge fund manager it acquired in March for $10 billion.
Blackstone also plans to spin off Blackstone Kailix advisers, the investment manager of its long/short equities fund, to a management team led by Manish Mittal, who plans to form a new fund as an independent entity.
"We believe these measures will enable us to operate more profitably in the current environment," Chief Operating Officer Tony James said.
Bloomberg- When Blackstone Group LP, the world’s biggest buyout firm, was pursuing the takeover of the Weather Channel cable network earlier this month with General Electric Co. and Bain Capital LLC, Wall Street balked at providing financing.
So the New York-based company turned to GSO Capital Partners LP, the hedge-fund manager it acquired in March, to pull off the largest U.S. leveraged buyout this year.
Blackstone can’t wait for banks, stuck with almost $100 billion of debt from earlier LBOs, to start lending again. Instead, it’s pushing deeper into deal financing with GSO. The strategy may hurt the hedge-fund unit’s returns — some approaching 40 percent — if slowing economies lead companies taken private by Blackstone to default on their debt.
