Blackstone Inc 's

The asset management industry is intensely competitive, and we expect it to remain so. We compete both globally and on a regional, industry and niche basis. We compete on the basis of a number of factors, including investment performance, transaction execution skills, access to capital, access to and retention of qualified personnel, reputation, range of products and services, innovation and price.
We face competition both in the pursuit of outside investors for our investment funds and in acquiring investments in attractive portfolio companies and making other investments. With respect to outside investors, many have increased the amount of commitments they are making to alternative investment funds. However, any increase in the allocation of amounts of capital to alternative investment strategies by institutional and individual investors could lead to a reduction in the size and duration of pricing inefficiencies that many of our investment funds seek to exploit. Certain institutional investors are demonstrating a preference to in-source their own investment professionals and to make direct investments in alternative assets without the assistance of private equity advisers like us. Such institutional investors may become our competitors and could cease to be our clients.
Depending on the investment, we face competition primarily from sponsors managing other private equity funds, specialized investment funds, hedge funds and other pools of capital, other financial institutions including sovereign wealth funds, corporate buyers and other parties. Several of these competitors have significant amounts of capital and many of them have investment objectives similar to ours, which may create additional competition for investment opportunities. Some of these competitors may also have a lower cost of capital and access to funding sources or other resources that are not available to us, which may create competitive disadvantages for us with respect to investment opportunities. Competitors may also be subject to different regulatory regimes or rules that may provide them more flexibility or better access to pursue transactions or raise capital for their investment funds.

In addition, some of these competitors may have higher risk tolerances, different risk assessments or lower return thresholds, which could allow them to consider a wider variety of investments and to bid more aggressively than us for investments that we want to make. Corporate buyers may be able to achieve synergistic cost savings with regard to an investment or be perceived by sellers as otherwise being more desirable bidders, which may provide them with a competitive advantage in bidding for an investment.
In all of our businesses, competition is also intense for the attraction and retention of qualified employees. Our ability to continue to compete effectively in our businesses will depend upon our ability to attract new employees and retain and motivate our existing employees.