Are China and India the next green pastures for private-equity dealmaking?
I think those areas will develop slowly. Culturally, in most of Asia, selling a company represents a defeat for the owner rather than a triumph. Outside Japan, Asian companies are basically seeking growth capital. And given the demands for growth capital, leveraged purchases aren’t necessarily the right financial structure for most companies. In Japan, the number of private-equity deals is slowly increasing, but they are still at quite a low level by the standards of the United States and Europe. What about South America? It’s hard to comment on South America as a whole continent. It has had periodic financial crises, so one needs to be careful in an environment that has experience with mixed levels of growth and historic high inflation. That doesn’t mean those things are going to happen tomorrow or the next day, but it does make one a bit more wary than in other parts of the world. When you started Blackstone 22 years ago, what were your goals? Have you fulfilled them? When we started
