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Blackstone’s flagship private credit fund was hit with $1.7bn of net outflows over the past month, as an exodus from the asset class gathered pace since the start of the year.
Redemption requests from the $82bn Blackstone private credit fund, known as Bcred, rose to 7.9 per cent of its assets in the first quarter, eclipsing a 5 per cent threshold that allows the private investment group to limit payouts to withdrawing investors.
The withdrawals will be closely watched across the $2tn private credit industry as an early sign of the flight retail investors are taking from the asset class.
Blackstone paid out the redemptions in full after the firm and its employees invested $400mn to help cover the requests, which it said further aligned the company with shareholders of the fund. The New York-headquartered group said it drew in nearly $2bn of new commitments from investors in the quarter but suffered roughly $3.7bn of redemption requests.
“Our conviction in BCRED is grounded in its strong portfolio and track record,” the firm said in a disclosure with the US securities regulator. It noted that it honoured all redemption requests in the period.
