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Blackstone announces first quarter loss16/05/2008. Source: AltAssets. 
 The Blackstone Group recorded a net loss of $251m in the first quarter of this year, due to the difficult situation especially larger buy-out houses are finding themselves in as a result of the credit crunch last summer.
In comparison, in the same quarter last year, the Group had a net income of $1.13bn.
However, assets under management are up 37 per cent to $113.53bn from $83.14bn a year ago.
Blackstone chairman and CEO Stephen A Schwarzman said in a statement, 'Turbulent markets throughout the world persisted in the first quarter, affecting virtually all asset pricing across credit and equity markets. This was both good and bad for us. On the one hand, it meant lower carrying values of some of our investments in the short term and restricted our disposition activity. On the other hand, purchase prices for new deals declined, opening up many interesting investment possibilities. Credit market dislocation, while limiting availability of debt for large leveraged transactions, has also created attractive debt investment opportunities, particularly in leveraged loans.
'Our well-timed GSO acquisition dramatically expanded our efforts in this area. Despite the challenges presented by a slowing global economy, overall our portfolio companies and real estate investments continued to perform well. Our balance sheet remains healthy and our long-term contractual management fees position us well to increase market share,' Schwarzman continued.
Blackstone's alternative asset management businesses include the management of corporate private equity funds, real estate funds, funds of hedge funds, debt funds (including leveraged lending funds), CLO vehicles, proprietary hedge funds and closed-end mutual funds.
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