Blackstone, Evercore Plan IPOs for Funds

Blackstone Group and Evercore Partners said Wednesday that they hoped to raise a combined $1.3 billion via initial public stock offerings, bringing to three the number of private equity firms that this week said they planned to tap individual investors for new capital.

Blackstone Group, which manages the world’s biggest corporate buyout fund, filed to raise $850 million for a fund that would invest in debt securities, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Evercore, a unit of the firm co-founded by former U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, filed to raise as much as $460 million that would be used to take minority stakes in companies, according to its filing.

The New York-based firms followed an IPO filing by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., one of the best-known corporate buyout firms, on Monday.

The companies are turning to the public for money amid increased competition among investment funds for their traditional investors -- state and corporate pension funds.

Billion-dollar buyout funds have multiplied to about 100 from 10 a decade ago. The funds typically invest in private businesses with the aim of selling their stakes years later at significant profits.

“An awful lot of private equity people are calling, gathering information and kicking the tires on conducting an IPO for a fund,” said Halle Benett, a managing director at brokerage UBS, one of the underwriters of the planned Blackstone sale.

Blackstone was founded in 1985 by former Lehman Bros. executives Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman. Evercore was founded in 1996 by Altman and two other partners.

From Bloomberg News