In the words of two people with knowledge of the situation, Scott Bommer of Blackstone Group, who was in charge of the Horizon platform's growth plan for its hedge fund subsidiary, is leaving the organization due to health issues.
Bommer, a previous hedge fund manager, entered Blackstone as a senior director of management in 2021 while the company was restructuring its $81 billion BAAM (Blackstone Alternative Asset Management) hedge fund division.
Investing committee overseen by Joe Dowling, head of BAAM Global, will now manage the Blackstone Horizon platform, according to the sources.
The Horizon platform, of which Bommer, 56, served as chief investment officer, was created to capitalize on broad trends by making investments in rapidly expanding public and private businesses. In July 2021, it made its debut with a funding round of about $2 billion.
As one of Blackstone's notable new launches, the platform found favor with swift fund commitments from investors.
Bommer managed the hedge fund SAB Capital, which invested in equities, loans, and mortgages, for 17 years prior to joining Blackstone.
After joining Blackstone in early 2021 to aid in restructuring the hedge fund division, Bommer was the first significant hire made by Dowling. The resume of Bommer matched Dowling's preference for employing elite talent with experience investing money rather than just distributing it.
Since the platform opened just before the markets began to decline, performance has been a problem for Horizon, which was designed to provide significant profits. During the early 2022 stock market collapse, management reduced its investment spending but refrained from adding to it.
According to a person acquainted with the figures, Horizon is down 22% from the overall fund since its launch. According to the source, the fund has a buying power of almost $1 billion.
Losses were also experienced by other hedge funds with comparable growth objectives. According to a prior report, Tiger Global Management dropped 56% of its value last year, while Whale Rock Capital Management lost 43%.
However, BAAM has performed well, and despite the decline in bonds and equities last year, 2022 saw BAAM's greatest return in years in terms of market performance. A referred to as 60/40 portfolio, which divides allocations between equities and bonds and is frequently used as a benchmark by institutional investors, showed a 16.9% decrease in comparison to the unit's declared net 4.1% gain.
The unit lagged the strategy by an annual -5.2% in the five years leading up to 2021, the year Dowling came on board.