Global private equity major Blackstone Group has elevated Mumbai-based Amit Dixit to the post of Asia PE head amid a raft of international promotions, a person confirmed to VCCircle.
Dixit was senior managing director and co-head of Asia acquisitions and head of India PE.
An alumnus of Harvard Business School, Stanford University and IIT Bombay, he was with rival PE firm Warburg Pincus before joining Blackstone in 2007.
Since then, he has been involved in India and South Asia operations.
Under Dixit, Blackstone did deals like the 2016 purchase of a majority stake in information technology services provider Mphasis from Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.
His elevation comes amid a raft of promotions across jurisdictions.
For example, Joseph Barrata, board member and global head of PE, also announced the appointment of Martin Brand as head of North America private equity and Peter Wallace as global head of core private equity, first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
All three are newly created roles, and the executives will continue to report to Baratta, the person quoted above confirmed.
Among other appointments, Jennifer Morgan will head portfolio operations. Morgan, former co-chief executive of business software giant SAP SE, had joined the firm in November to succeed David Calhoun who left in late 2019.
Blackstone did not respond to queries till press time.
Beginning this year, it promoted three executives in India in its PE and real estate divisions.
In January, the investment giant elevated senior managing director Menes Chee to head Blackstone Tactical Opportunities Fund in Asia after senior managing director Kishore Moorjani resigned.
Blackstone
New York-based Blackstone is the world's largest manager of alternative assets with total assets under management (AUM) of $649 billion, of which $212 billion is part of the PE business.
Its India AUM including private equity, real estate and tactical as on December 31, 2020 was about $50 billion.
From 2006 till last year, Blackstone said it had committed $15.2 billion of investments in the country through private equity, real estate and tactical opportunities funds.
In terms of overall investments in 2020 in India, the private equity major was a close second among PE firms after Saudi Arabia’s PIF, at around $3.2 billion with seven deals. It struck back-to-back transactions worth over $1 billion each in the last quarter of 2020.
In December, it sealed the acquisition of Indian billionaire Ajay Piramal-owned Piramal Glass Pvt Ltd at an enterprise valuation of Rs 7,500 crore (about $1 billion), outbidding many other private equity firms for the glass packaging company.
In November, the world’s biggest PE firm signed a binding term sheet with Bengaluru-based Prestige Project Estates Ltd to acquire commercial, retail and hotel properties for about $1.23 billion.
The private equity firm was also in advanced discussions to acquire L&T Finance’s mutual fund business.