Blue Owl Capital hires ex-Blackstone executive Pillemer for stakes business

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

BOSTON (Reuters) – Asset management firm Blue Owl, which specializes in buying stakes in alternative money managers and direct lending, is hiring an executive from Blackstone Group’s hedge fund and private equity stakes business.

Marc Pillemer will join New York-headquartered Blue Owl in January as a managing director and senior member of the investment team, executives told Reuters.

He spent the last seven years at Blackstone, where he was a managing director, and worked at Goldman Sachs before that.

“Marc is an amazing talent in this industry and it will be great to have him on the team,” Blue Owl co-president Michael Rees said.

Blue Owl, Blackstone and Goldman are the three largest players in the so-called GP stakes business and all recently raised billions of dollars for new funds with Blue Owl’s Fund V targeting $9 billion in assets.

“The exciting growth trends in this industry require more and more capital,” Rees said, adding: “These aren’t cash out trades. This is growth capital.”

Blue Owl has $63 billion in assets and generates 97% of its management fees from permanent capital vehicles.

It was formed earlier this year when Dyal Capital Partners and Owl Rock Capital merged and Blue Owl opted to go public with Altimar Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition vehicle backed by HPS Investment Partners. Within Blue Owl, the Dyal name is still being used for the stakes business.

Blue Owl’s stock price has surged roughly 70% since it was turned into a publicly traded company in May.

Since its founding in 2011, Dyal has bought 53 minority stakes including in private equity firms Silver Lake and Vista Equity Partners and more recently in Iconiq Capital, a multi-family office that manages money for Mark Zuckerberg.

Blackstone has seen turnover this year with Scott Soussa, who co-headed the hedge fund and private equity stakes business, leaving for Angelo Gordon, while Melvin Hibberd is joining Hunter Point Capital.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Mark Potter)