Investing giant Blackstone is buying up real estate at a rapid rate.

Just this past week, it bet $13 billion on student housing with a deal to buy American Campus Communities. In the past few months, it acquired Australia’s Crown Resorts for $6.3 billion, and reinvested in its European logistics real-estate company.

It’s working. Blackstone smashed its earnings records earlier this year, largely thanks to its booming real-estate business.

Insider set out to identify the key people driving the land grab, and landed on 17 executives focused on everything from investing in life-sciences office buildings to Hollywood studios to multifamily apartment buildings.

Here, Hana Alberts, one of the editors on the story, gives us a look at the work that went into creating this list.

What prompted you to make this list?

On recent investor calls where Blackstone has reported record earnings, executives like Jon Gray and Stephen Schwarzman chalked them up to the firm’s real-estate business. We wanted to identify the influential people leading that division, the largest arm of the private-equity giant, with $280 billion of its $915 billion of assets under management.

Did any of these power players really stand out to you?

I was struck by how Nadeem Meghji, the head of real estate for the Americas, led Blackstone to nab a 49% stake in a cluster of Hollywood studios in June 2020, when the pandemic had thrown the economy for a loop.

I am also amazed by how much these folks can accomplish at young ages. Katharine Keenan became CEO of Blackstone’s Mortgage Realty Trust at age 36, and 33-year-old David Levine has been involved with $100 billion in transactions since 2010 and is now cohead of Americas acquisitions.

What are the trends they’re keeping an eye on this year?

These leaders are investing in various forms of real estate right now, from apartment complexes in South Florida to college-campus housing. Other hot areas include warehouses (thanks, ecommerce and next-day delivery!) and biotech lab space — but there’s a notable lack of investment in major office complexes, another sign of the times.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackstones-280-billion-real-estate-122000286.html