According to The New York Observer, the Blackstone principals were not on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange when their IPO opened.

But The Man in The White Suit was. Tom Wolfe, legendary author of among others The Bonfire of the Vanities was making his first visit to the Exchange floor.

“All the years I’ve been in New York, I’ve never been on the floor of the Stock Exchange. So, a friend of mine, who knows a member, got me invited. I’m walking around and I see these television cameras. Somebody in the television crew spots me. I don’t even know where he was from. So, he says to me, ‘What do you think of this Blackstone I.P.O.?’ I’m joking, I say, ‘I think it’s the end of capitalism as we know it.’”

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The Congress of the United States spent more than two years on ERISA, the Pension Reform Act of 1974, hearing countless witnesses, conducting dozens of studies, and considering a raft of alternative proposals. Yet there is not one mention in those thousands of printed pages of the social or political implications of the pension funds, and very little concern for the economic impacts, on capital market or capital formation… -Peter F. Drucker (1976)1

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan led a successful group of bidders for Bell Canada (BCE)2 on June 30. According to the New York Times (July 1, 2007), ‘The deal for Bell Canada, worth about 51.7 billion Canadian dollars ($48.8 billion), would be the largest leveraged buyout ever.’

The Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board put BCE in play, and a number of other large Canadian plans indicated interest in bidding before withdrawing.

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