Daiwa-Blackstone Talks Fall Through

TOKYO (Reuters) – Daiwa Securities Group Inc (8601.T), Japan’s second-largest brokerage, said that it would drop its plans for a large private equity fund after talks with Blackstone fell through.

Daiwa had been in talks with private equity firm Blackstone Group LP (BX.N) to form a fund targeting Asian companies, Daiwa Securities Chief Executive Shigeharu Suzuki told Reuters on Tuesday. Suzuki said in August that the brokerage was aiming for a 500 billion yen ($5.4 billion) fund to diversify its revenue sources. [ID:nT367120]

“Now we are looking at funds as large as 20 billion yen to 30 billion yen,” he said on Tuesday “It is difficult to collect 500 billion yen in private equity fund in this environment,” he added.

Daiwa had been aiming to form a big fund with Blackstone which has expertise in this area, Suzuki said.

He did not elaborate on why the talks did not work and said Daiwa would set up smaller funds on its own.

Global private equity firms have been hit hard by the credit crunch and are struggling to get financing to complete deals. Their global acquisitions tumbled 70 percent to $231 billion last year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

By Junko Fujita