Blackstone’s Menes Chee, one of the founding members of the firm’s tactical opportunities team, left after 15 years with the US alternative-asset manager, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Chee, 47, departed as Asia head of tac opps after relocating to Hong Kong from New York in February 2021 to take up the regional role, the people said, asking not to be identified because the move hasn’t been publicly announced. A Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Blackstone declined to comment.
The exit of Chee, one of the longest-serving and senior-most partners at Blackstone, comes at a time when David Blitzer, global head of the division, has been discussing ceding day-to-day responsibilities at the unit and settling into an advisory or chair role, people familiar with the matter said in July. Chee was one of Blitzer’s first three hires, in 2012.
During his stint at the firm, Chee led the multibillion-dollar acquisitions of Fidelity & Guaranty Life in 2017 and Allstate Life Insurance, later rebranded Everlake, in 2021, helping the firm expand its foothold in the insurance industry.
Chee navigated the team through pandemic and oversaw the sale of La Trobe Financial in Australia, Partners Life and Arena Living retirement villages in New Zealand. In July, his tac opps team made a structured equity investment in Symphony Infrastructure Partners, an Australian energy-transition infrastructure-services platform.
Since its founding in 2012, Blackstone’s tactical opportunities division has grown into a unit with US$35 billion ($45.60 billion) of assets. It made bets on growth equity — which typically involves taking stakes in late-stage startups on the verge of profitability — before the firm launched a group dedicated to those deals.
