Blackstone, the world's largest manager of alternative assets, enters into a strategic partnership with Vanguard and Wellington Management to develop diversified investment portfolios for retail investors. The aim is to offer products that were previously reserved for institutional investors, including shares in private equity, private credit, and infrastructure projects.

The companies involved initially did not comment in detail on the planned products but announced a market launch in the coming months. What is clear: The new multi-asset portfolios are to be distributed via financial advisors and will also be available in the long term for retirement products such as 401(k) plans. The latter, in particular, is considered a lucrative but previously hardly tapped target group in the industry.

Vanguard, market leader in passive funds with $10.4 trillion in assets under management, manages around $2.5 trillion in retirement accounts alone. Wellington, as an institutional asset manager focusing on active strategies, contributes around $1.3 trillion.

Blackstone has been promoting the opening of private markets to wealthy individual investors for years. The Breit Fund (Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust), launched in 2017, was a first step in this direction. In the meantime, the company manages four large open-end funds for private clients, focusing on real estate, direct lending, private equity, and infrastructure. By the end of 2024, around 260 billion US dollars of the total 1.1 trillion US dollars of assets under management came from the retail business — a multiple compared to competitors.

The industry follows the same trend: KKR cooperates with Capital Group, BlackRock with Partners Group, Apollo with State Street. The goal is always the same – making structurally illiquid, high-yield assets accessible to a broader investor base. Blackstone is now setting a new signal with two heavyweights from the world of public markets.