NEW YORK, May 21: Private equity giant Blackstone said on Monday it planned a partial stock flotation and a stake sale to a Chinese state investment firm that together could raise more than $7 billion.

The initial public offering marks the first step into the world of publicly traded and regulated stocks for a company at the heart of the boom in private equity deals.

For China, flush with $1.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, the deal agreed on Sunday with Blackstone represents a fledgling state investment vehicle’s launch into the high-risk end of Western capital markets.

“We intend to continue to follow the management approach that has served us well as a private firm of focusing on making the right decisions about purchasing and selling the right assets at the right time and at the right prices, without regard to how those decisions affect our financial results in any given quarter,” Blackstone said in its filing on Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

—AFP