Blackstone's Latest RE Fund: 'Capital in Scale'

NEW YORK CITY—As was predicted six months ago in published reports, Blackstone has closed its latest global real estate fund at a whopping $15.8 billion. The new fund, Blackstone Real Estate Partners VIII, tops its predecessor by $2.5 billion; when it closed in 2012, Blackstone Real Estate Partners VII was the largest private equity real estate fund yet raised.

The Wall Street Journal reported in late March that Blackstone had institutional portion of fundraising for BREP VIII with $14.5 billion in commitments. It then planned to raise an additional $1.3 billion from retail investors, according to the WSJ; at the time a company spokesman told GlobeSt.com that the company had no comment. Substantially all the capital in BREP VIII comes from investors, domestic as well as foreign, that had participated previously in Blackstone’s real estate funds.