NEW YORK, April 23 (Reuters) – The world’s largest alternative asset manager Blackstone designed its funds with changes in credit markets in mind, its chairman and CEO said on Thursday, as the company reported rising earnings amid some investor concerns about private debt.
“We believe we are moving toward a period of lower base rates once we work through the impact of the Iran war,” Stephen Schwarzman told analysts on a conference call.
“We also expect defaults to move higher from historic lows, as we stated previously,” he added.
“But we’ve designed our funds with these cycles in mind, with low fund leverage, high current income generation and the equivalent of meaningful reserves for future potential losses, and remain highly confident in our ability to continue to achieve a premium return to liquid markets over time.”
(Reporting by Isla Binnie in New York and Utkarsh Shetti in Bengaluru)
