Blackstone is the world's largest alternative asset manager, running private equity, real estate, credit and hedge fund strategies on behalf of pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and other large institutional investors. Rather than owning these assets directly on its own balance sheet, Blackstone earns management fees on the capital it oversees and performance fees when its funds generate strong returns, a model that scales with assets under management rather than with any single investment's outcome. The firm has built one of the largest private real estate portfolios in the world and has increasingly pushed into private credit, lending directly to companies as banks have pulled back from some corporate lending. Blackstone's earnings are sensitive to how easily it can raise new capital and eventually sell existing investments, both of which slow when markets are volatile or credit is expensive.