Blackstone Names Nadeem Meghji Global Co-Head of Real Estate
Ken Caplan will in turn become the investment giant’s co-chief investment officer with Lionel Assant
By Nicholas Rizzi January 11, 2024 1:16 pm
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Blackstone (BX) has appointed Ken Caplan as a newly created co-chief investment officer and promoted Nadeem Meghji to take over Caplan’s role as global co-head of real estate, the company announced Thursday.
Caplan will share the CIO post with Lionel Assant, who has headed up the firm’s private equity team in Europe since 2012. The company said the co-CIOs will help oversee investments across its entire portfolio as Blackstone recently surpassed $1 trillion in assets under management.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
“The promotion of these highly talented executives will help the firm better identify compelling global investment themes while also enhancing our disciplined investment process,” Jonathan Gray, the president and chief operating officer of Blackstone, said in a statement.
Blackstone added that it created the new roles to gear up for an “extremely active deployment period,” with the firm saying it has more than $200 billion it’s looking to invest.
While Blackstone has seen record redemption requests for its real estate investment trust over the past year, the private equity giant has made some massive deals in a tight market. That includes acquiring a 20 percent stake in $16.8 billion of commercial real estate loans from the failed Signature Bank; acquiring software developer Civica at a value of $2.5 billion; and raising $30.4 billion to invest in real estate worldwide.
It’s also made several industrial purchases around the country, most recently dropping $183.9 million for a Home Depot warehouse in Southern California through its Link Logistics arm.
Now overseeing all of that will be Caplan, who joined Blackstone in 1997 and served as the global head of its real estate portfolio since 2018, sharing the position with Kathleen McCarthy.
McCarthy will now be joined by Meghji, who has been at Blackstone since 2008, to handle its global real estate presence. Meghji has served as Blackstone’s real estate head in the U.S. and Canada and was credited with growing those holdings to more than $200 billion in assets under management with a value of $400 billion.
“Nadeem is the perfect leader to succeed Ken, given his tremendous investment acumen and operational experience,” McCarthy said in a statement. “I am excited to partner with him in the years ahead.”
Blackstone made one other people move recently, promoting Giovanni Cutaia to global chief operating officer of real estate. Cutaia has been Blackstone’s head of global real estate asset management since 2018 and he will continue to hold that position, the company said.
Nicholas Rizzi can be reached at nrizzi@commercialobserver.com.
