Kathleen McCarthy and Nadeem Meghji.
Kathleen McCarthy, Nadeem Meghji
Global co-heads at Blackstone
Last year's rank: 3
To say that Blackstone Real Estate had a “big” year in 2023 would not just be an understatement, but would likely constitute libel. Try “mammoth,” or maybe “gargantuan.”
Led by Kathleen McCarthy and Nadeem Meghji, who was promoted in January 2024 from head of real estate Americas to global co-head alongside McCarthy, the firm achieved several industry milestones over the last 12 months.
In April 2023, Blackstone announced it had raised an absurd $30.4 billion for its Blackstone Real Estate Partners X (BREP X), the largest private equity or real estate drawdown fund ever. In December, the firm acquired a significant portion of a $17 billion commercial real estate loan portfolio via the defunct Signature Bank.
“That was an opportunity to buy performing loans on real estate concentrated in the New York market at a large discount to par value,” said McCarthy. “Because we had this incredible wealth of expertise and talent across our equity and debt areas that could underwrite 2,600 loans and deep knowledge of the market, we could step up with certainty and move quickly.”
Other huge deals included Blackstone’s $3.5 billion equity transaction to privatize Tricon Residential — one of the nation’s largest single-family rental home developers and operators — its joint venture with Digital Realty to develop $7 billion worth of data centers in Germany, France and Northern Virginia, and its $10 billion transaction to take AIR Communities — another rental apartment REIT — private, as well.
“Our focus is always on trying to position our investors’ capital in the sectors and geographies that are benefiting from mega trends happening in our world,” explained McCarthy. “Our objective is to make sure we’re concentrating capital in the sectors benefiting from trends, and pivoting away from things like traditional U.S. office.”
Despite being a capital markets behemoth with its fingers in seemingly every pie, Blackstone’s core focus remains producing steady returns for its global investor base.
“One of the things that’s important for all of us at Blackstone is to deliver performance for our investors,” said Meghji. “At the end of the day, that’s our core mission and that’s what our investors are trusting us to do.”
