The company's ambition to launch the Blackstone Private Equity Strategies fund were scuppered in 2022 after it was forced to limit redemptions from its flagship $67bn property fund.
Fears over commercial property valuations and a rush to cash caused a surge in redemption requests from the Blackstone Real Estate Income trust - also known as BREIT- leading the group to implement limits on withdrawals.
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This highlighted the risks of private funds with limited ability to quickly exit investments, causing Blackstone's bosses Stephen Schwarzman and Jonathan Gray to temporarily pause the launch.
But according to the FT, subscriptions will start being taken later this year for the new offering, which bring corporate buyouts, the foundation of Blackstone's business, to wealthy individuals after a decade-long effort.
Investor commitments for the fund will reportedly begin in Q4, with the launch planned for January next year.
To bolster demand, Blackstone will offer investors a six-month fee holiday, after which the fund will then charge a management fee of 1.25% of assets and a 12.5% performance fee above a 5% annual hurdle rate.
According to its prospectus, the valuations of the fund's assets may differ from liquidation values that could be realised in the event that it were forced to sell assets.
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BREIT was launched in 2017 and immediately drew in tens of billions of dollars in investment from individual investors. The group then launched sister fund BCRED in 2020, with the purpose of making debt investments.
But unlike BREIT and BCRED, which both generate a significant portion of their returns from regular distributions to investors, there have been no talks of a regular dividend for Blackstone Private Equity Strategies.
The manager will be under no obligation to sell assets and return cash to investors and to avoid the risk of asset fire sales, as investors must accept limited liquidity rights. They will be allowed to pull up to 5% of the fund's assets in any given quarter before limits kick in.
According to securities filings, the fund will not have a dedicated private equity investment team and will instead be led by Christopher James and Todd Hirsch, two executives in the company's tactical opportunities division.
According to its website, Blackstone already boasts corporate private equity AUM of around $137bn across 123 portfolio companies and with $40bn available capital to invest.