The Big Take
At Blackstone’s $339 Billion Property Arm, the Honeymoon Is Over
As the cheap-money era fades into history, the world’s biggest real-estate investor is moving into riskier new terrain in the hunt for stellar returns.
A QTS data center campus construction site in Litchfield Park, Arizona.
Photographer: Ash Ponders/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Nadeem Meghji was on honeymoon in late 2022 when the biggest storm to have rocked Blackstone Inc.’s property business hit its peak.
The private equity behemoth had just capped withdrawals from the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT), a fund at the vanguard of its money-spinning push to win the hearts of retail investors. As head of the firm’s US property division, Meghji was at the eye of the tempest — newlywed or not.