The company, which has run the Blackstone University programme for 13 years globally, will launch it in Hong Kong along with the Private Wealth Management Association (PWMA).
The course aims to provide knowledge and resources for wealth managers to support individual investors who are increasingly looking to diversify their portfolios and allocate funds to private markets, the PWMA and Blackstone said on Thursday.
“While there’s momentum in the adoption of private markets, individual investors remain under-allocated,” said Ed Huang, head of Asia-Pacific for Blackstone Private Wealth Solutions. “We believe allocation will continue to rise as wealth-management professionals and individual investors seek portfolio diversification and attractive risk-adjusted performance.”
Participants in private markets are predominantly institutional investors such as public pension and endowment funds. However, nearly 90 per cent of the high-net-worth investors in Hong Kong intend to increase their allocations to alternative assets, including private equity, private debt, hedge funds, private real estate and infrastructure, according to a survey by Endowus earlier this year.
Top money managers have also adopted diversified asset-allocation strategies to generate alpha and hedge risks amid falling interest rates and growing geopolitical tensions.
“Hong Kong has emerged as an important wealth-management hub, and more individual investors are seeking access to private markets to enhance their portfolios,” said Amy Lo Choi-wan, chairman of PWMA Executive Committee. Lo is also UBS’s chairman of global wealth management in Asia and CEO of UBS Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is home to more than 2,700 single-family offices and is connected with mainland China on wealth-management products thanks to city officials’ strong push. More than 10,000 professionals were engaged in private banking and private wealth-management in the city in 2023, with assets under management exceeding HK$9 trillion (US$1.2 trillion), according to a survey by the Securities and Futures Commission.
The programme will be available from February 2025, comprising a series of half-day in-person sessions at Blackstone’s offices in Hong Kong. PWMA’s 43 full members are able to attend and earn credit based on their employers’ guidelines.
Blackstone University’s programme offers the fundamentals of private assets and their role in investment portfolios, as well as Blackstone’s own insights, according to its website. The company manages more than US$1.1 trillion in assets.
The firm’s private-wealth solutions business has stressed the importance of education in partnering with financial advisers to attract more clients. It manages US$250 billion for individuals globally.
Around 15,000 advisers have taken part in the programme since 2011. Last month, the private wealth solutions team hosted its first Blackstone University event in Tokyo, with 250 financial advisers attending.
