{"id":34509,"date":"2009-10-28T17:55:26","date_gmt":"2009-10-28T21:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pehub.com\/?p=54026"},"modified":"2009-10-28T17:55:26","modified_gmt":"2009-10-28T21:55:26","slug":"blackstone-coo-sees-capital-shift-away-from-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/34509","title":{"rendered":"Blackstone COO Sees Capital Shift Away From the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>NEW YORK (Reuters) – Blackstone Group’s COO Tony James said on Wednesday he foresees a gradual shift in the coming years of capital pools away from the United States to Asia, the Middle East and other areas of the globe.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a Financial Times conference in New York, he noted the dollar’s decline and said the United States may have to deal with a “much more level playing field where the dollar’s supremacy … is not taken for granted.”<\/p>\n

“I think we’re on a verge of a shift, which will be gradual — not overnight or two years from now — where the big capital pools shift away from America, to Asia, the Middle East, Australia and even Latin America,” James said.<\/p>\n

He is also concerned that the U.S. response to the financial crisis could harm America’s competitiveness and limit business.<\/p>\n

“I personally think we’re on track to do a lot of things which won’t stop a recurrence any more than Sarbanes-Oxley stopped this crisis; but will impose a lot of cost and limitations on our global competitiveness,” he said.<\/p>\n

Blackstone, one of the world’s most powerful private equity firms, has about $29 billion to invest, according to second-quarter figures it gave in August. It has investments in companies across the globe, including Hilton hotels and casino firm Harrah’s Entertainment.<\/p>\n

“America has had its issues in the last 18 months — but it also has had one hell of a ten-year run in productivity,” said James. “We’re a little bit in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and damaging our long-term competitiveness in reaction to a short-term crisis.”<\/p>\n

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats are cracking down on the banks and Wall Street, aiming to prevent a repeat of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.<\/p>\n

James defended the role of private equity during the financial crisis, saying “no one can point to it as a cause” of the meltdown.<\/p>\n

He added that he thinks asset prices are too high, but still sees a lot of investment opportunities for Blackstone.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the same conference, Laurence Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest publicly traded investment management firms, said U.S. financial markets are still healing.<\/p>\n

“We’re not seeing any increase in leverage,” said Fink. He added that asset prices like equities and fixed-income securities are rising on factors other than the use of leverage.<\/p>\n

Fink was alluding to the stimulus packages of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve aimed at jump-starting financial markets and economic growth.
\nBy Megan Davies and Jennifer Ablan
\n(Additional reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh in D.C.; Editing by Gary Hill)<\/p>\n

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Blackstone Group’s COO Tony James said on Wednesday he foresees a gradual shift in the coming years of capital pools away from the United States to Asia, the Middle East and other areas of the globe. Speaking at a Financial Times conference in New York, he noted the dollar’s decline and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}