By Isla Binnie
NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) – Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, has agreed to increase payouts to investors from a private credit fund this quarter, leading to net outflows, a securities filing showed on Monday.
Investors in the $82 billion Blackstone Private Credit Fund(BCRED), who usually have a chance to ask to withdraw 5% of their holdings every quarter, requested a total of 7.9% in the first quarter, Blackstone said in the filing.
Based on the fund’s current valuation, this amounted to $3.7 billion, which was less than the $2 billion in new commitments made to the fund, leaving it with net outflows of $1.7 billion.
Anxiety has built in the private credit market due to questions about valuations and transparency, and broader credit quality concerns were fanned by two bankruptcies last year. Funds like BCRED, which are open to wealthy individual investors, have come under particular strain in recent weeks.
“Total repurchase requests for the quarter exceeded the 5% of shares typically available for repurchase,” Blackstone said, adding it would “upsize” the amount it typically lets investors redeem, to 7% of the value of the fund.
New York-based Blackstone said a further 0.9% which investors had asked to redeem would be “offset” by a total $400 million invested by the firm and its employees, meaning it would satisfy all requests.
Blackstone said that approach was driven by the structure of the fund, “not by any constraints on BCRED’s liquidity”.
(Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Chris Reese and Christopher Cushing)
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