Blackstone's Farhad Karim on Blackstone's "relentless" focus on serving private wealth

Original Publish Date: July 9, 2026 Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast. Today’s podcast takes us to the heart of Mayfair in London, where Blackstone Private Wealth COO Farhad Karim shared the firm’s history and evolution in Europe. He took a walk down memory lane to discuss the firm’s 25th anniversary in Europe as we walked through Berkeley Square from Blackstone’s current office to their new office at the other end of the square, highlighting how the firm has become the largest owner of commercial real estate in Europe and the importance of building a local presence in the region. Farhad took on the role of Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone Private Wealth in 2024 after a career at Blackstone that included serving as Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone Europe and holding a senior leadership role in the firm’s Real Estate business. In this Alt Goes Mainstream podcast episode, Farhad talks about how his international background and earlier role leading Blackstone Europe informs his approach to building Blackstone’s $300B+ private wealth business across fragmented global channels. Farhad explains what has stayed constant at Blackstone—relentless focus on performance, transparency, and being a fast, certain counterparty—and why local presence and education at scale matter for advisors and end investors. They discuss rising interest but low allocations to private markets, product evolution from drawdown funds to evergreen and multi-strategy solutions (including the Blackstone Vanguard/Wellington alliance), scale advantages in sourcing and data, AI’s role in investing and portfolio operations, and the risk of misleading narratives about private markets and “semi-liquid” structures. Footnotes (Timestamp 02:47.8): Largest owners of commercial real estate in Europe. (Timestamp 33:01.1): Reference to Class I annualized, inception-to-date return from January 2017. This episode was brought to you by Ultimus Fund Solutions (www.ultimusfundsolutions.com) Please Subscribe: YouTube Videos and Shorts: / @altgoesmainstreamagm (https://shorturl.at/QxOq9) Subscribe to Alt Goes Mainstream: https://altgoesmainstream.substack.com/ Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Follow Michael on LinkedIn: / michaelsidgmore #AltGoesMainstream #michaelsidgmore #alternativeinvestments #finance #wealthmanagement #privatemarkets #ria #marketing #podcasts #funds #portfolio #privateequity #financialmarkets #familyoffice #assetmanagement #privateequity #financialeducation #wealthbuilding #investmentplatform #wealthtech #financialadvisor #privatecredit #investing #blackstone --------------- Chapters: 00:00 Introduction of Farhad Karim, Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone Private Wealth 01:32 How Farhad's international background shapes his approach to serving global wealth investors 02:12 Farhad's career evolution at Blackstone and the firm's growth 03:28 What has stayed constant at Blackstone: performance, transparency, speed, and certainty 04:48 Parallels between building Blackstone's European real estate business and its global wealth business 08:22 Scaling education in private markets and assessing where the wealth channel stands in understanding them 11:10 Current adoption of private markets and the evolution of product structures from drawdown to evergreens to multi-strategy 18:10 Harmonizing institutional, wealth, and insurance capital and leveraging scale and AI for investment advantages 23:13 Separating signal from noise on private market risks and reframing semi-liquidity as a structural strength 33:34 Owning the narrative through transparency, content innovation, and humanizing the firm via media and the holiday video