(Bloomberg) -- Blackstone Inc. has hired Tyler Dickson, former global head of investment banking at Citigroup Inc., to lead client relations for its credit and insurance unit as the private equity giant continues to expand its lending business.
The new global role will oversee the credit team that maintains relationships with the insurance companies, pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and asset managers that use Blackstone to invest their money, according to a statement seen by Bloomberg News.
Dickson’s departure continues a marked shift at the helm of Citigroup’s banking division — one of five newly-formed business lines under Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser. The veteran banker was seen as a leading internal contender to run the division, but that job went instead to Vis Raghavan, who led global investment banking at JPMorgan Chase & Co. before he started at Citigroup last month.
Raghavan will assume day-to-day responsibility for investment banking, while Jason Rekate and Tasnim Ghiawadwala will continue to lead corporate and commercial banking respectively, according to an internal Citigroup memo seen by Bloomberg.
A representative for Citigroup declined to comment.
The new role brings together all client relationships under one person, including for fundraising, capital formation, as well as partnering on origination of new transactions, said Gilles Dellaert, global head of Blackstone Credit and Insurance, in an interview. He added that Dickson, who will report to him, brings experience and leadership from his three decades of having been in and around this business and these markets.
“We’ve pivoted our business from selling one drawdown fund at a time to sitting with clients and saying, ‘Look, we’re open architecture, we can do public to private, non-IG to IG, and anything in between. Where do you have a need in your portfolio?’” Dellaert said.
Private equity firms across the industry are pivoting to the fast-growing business of credit. Blackstone has one of the largest lending arms and that has been an especially good fit for insurance companies looking for stable income. The credit and insurance business is Blackstone’s fastest growing segment and currently manages about $330 billion.
Last year, Blackstone consolidated the groups that invest in corporate credit and asset-based finance as well as a business that manages money for insurers under one chain of command, and named the segment Blackstone Credit & Insurance, or BXCI. The firm also set a goal to grow total credit assets to $1 trillion within a decade.
--With assistance from Davide Scigliuzzo and Dawn Lim.
(Updates with details from Citi internal memo in fourth paragraph.)
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