BlackRock’s Room to Grow

Meet the man charged with building the private equity platform of the world’s largest asset manager: BlackRock. In a wide-ranging interview with Privcap, Russell Steenberg, Managing Director and Global Head of BlackRock Private Equity Partners, discusses BlackRock’s ambitions in the alternative investment space and its strategy for acquisitions, such as the recent purchase of Swiss RE’s fund-of-funds business.

Steenberg also discusses the “natural evolution” of the separate accounts business, why “knowing how to play the cycle” is so important for private equity success, what he looks for in GPs, his admiration for industry pioneers Joseph Rice and John Vogelstein, and why he believes “we have only scratched the surface on private equity” and its potential for growth.