Just how big is the Blackstone IPO? Over at DealJournal, Dana
Cimilluca calls it “the biggest initial public offering since Google”.
But in fact it’s much bigger than that.
Check out Renaissance Capital’s league
table of the biggest US IPOs of all time. If Blackstone raises $4 billion,
that would put it in 6th place, as the biggest IPO since CIT Group was spun
off from Tyco in 2002, almost five years ago. If you exclude spin-offs, then
Blackstone will be the second-biggest US IPO ever, and the biggest since UPS
went public in 1999. Either way, Blackstone will be much bigger than Google,
which raised $1.7 billion, according to Renaissance.
Of course, if you take off your US-centric blinkers, then Blackstone is a veritable
minnow compared to China’s ICBC, which raised $21.9 billion back in December.