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BlackRock Founds Private Equity Platform With Merrill Lynch Team
Harriet Davies
24 May 2011
BlackRock has hired Nathan Thorne, George Bitar and Mandakini Puri as managing directors to head up a new private equity platform within its alternatives offering, which it expects to grow to around 20 employees within a year. Thorne, Bitar and Puri founded Merrill Lynch’s private equity business in 1994, and remained there until 2009. They began working together at Merrill Lynch in 1990. At BlackRock they will form the leadership team of the new division, charged with building it out and ensuring private equity is connected with the firm’s wider investment offering on a global basis. They will report to Matthew Botein, managing director and head of BlackRock Alternative Investors. As of 31 March, the Alternative Investors business represented $115.3 billion of assets under management, including in hedge funds, hedge funds of funds, real estate, private equity funds of funds, opportunistic investment vehicles, commodities and currencies.