Gillian Tan, Columnist

Blackstone's Yield Appeal

Invoking the firm's dividend payouts to make the case for a higher valuation.

October 27, 2016 at 7:58 PM UTC

Gillian Tan is a senior reporter covering finance and alternative asset classes including real estate, infrastructure, private equity, private credit, venture capital and sports business. She previously wrote an opinion column for Bloomberg and was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. She is a qualified chartered accountant.

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Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone Group, is accustomed to having people pay attention to his point of view, whether it's in a meeting room at the firm's Park Avenue headquarters or in his capacity as a philanthropist. But he seems to have trouble getting his message across when it comes to Blackstone's shares.

As the firm's biggest shareholder with a stake of roughly 20 percent, Schwarzman has gone to lengths to persuade investors that Blackstone deserves a higher valuation -- even going so far as walking through the math of his argument -- but his words have fallen on deaf ears.