By
Randall W. Forsyth
Word
Count: 991 | Companies Featured in This Article: Blackstone, Bear
Stearns, Freedom Acquisition Holdings
IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, it was the worst of times. In other words, a
dickens of a day.
Just as Blackstone Group's blow-out initial public offering Friday endowed
Steve Schwarzman with a $9 billion fortune, Bear Stearns had to stump up $3.2
billion to bail out one of its namesake hedge funds.
Yet both events could represent two sides of the same coin: a possible peak
of the credit cycle. Just as the massive expansion of credit made possible the
extraordinary wealth for private-equity investors such as Blackstone, it also
provided the leverage that has inflated the returns ...
Private equity . . . . going public . . . . has to mean
something one would think?
Don Ewers