Bennett Goodman is set to retire from GSO Capital, the last of the three founders of Blackstone’s powerhouse credit unit to leave the firm.
The 62- year- old executive founded GSO with Tripp Smith and Doug Ostrover in 2005. The trio — whose surnames form the firm’s three initials — then sold GSO to Blackstone three years later for about $1bn.
Since then GSO has crested the wave of money pouring into so-called “private credit” — whereby funds instead of banks make higher-risk corporate loans — amassing close to $140bn of assets under management. The business has become increasingly important to Black
stone, which now manages more money in debt investments than in its traditional buyout funds.
Mr Goodman negotiated a new pay package with Blackstone last year, which provided faster vesting of a $200m share award dating from 2015. Crucially, the package offered Mr Goodman new sweeteners for five years after he retires from Blackstone.
The deal was seen by GSO insiders as a bid to head off the possibility of Mr Goodman joining one of the rival credit firms headed by his fellow founders. Mr Ostrover left in 2015 and has since formed Owl Rock alongside former dealmakers from investment bank Goldman Sachs and rival private equity firm KKR.
Mr Smith, who left last year and is raising his own credit fund, has already poached at least one other senior GSO executive. The credit fund manager’s chief operating officer George Fan, who had been with GSO since its inception in 2005, left his role at the start of the year, and agreed to join Mr Smith’s new firm.
Whereas earlier defectors have sought to raise outside capital for their new ventures, Blackstone suggested that Mr Goodman would follow a different path. He “plans to establish a new Goodman family office”, the firm said in a statement on Thursday, adding that he would remain on hand at Blackstone to advise on direct lending and smooth relations with investors.
The departure of Mr Goodman, who cut his teeth at junk bond king Michael Milken’s Drexel Burnham Lambert in the 1980s, is the final step of a changing of the guard at GSO that began when the firm named Dwight Scott president in 2017.
