Making sense of Apollo’s timing

There was an interesting communication from The Blackstone Group, L.P. (NYSE: BX) this morning and the company issued a press release confirming that data.

Blackstone announced the closing of Blackstone Real Estate Partners VI. Its total capital commitments are listed as $10.9 Billion. Maybe borrowing money is much tougher from banks that are trying to keep their liquidity and capital ratios from getting too ugly, but this is more than impressive for a capital raise. It noted that this now makes nine different real estate funds since its inception and this is creating the largest real estate opportunity fund ever raised.

Over the past few years, we've seen a flood of special purpose acquisition company offerings (or SPACs). Basically, these are public companies that raise money to pursue acquisitions. It's a way to provide targets with some liquidity as well as a public vehicle (to do things like buy other companies).