Lazard Financial Services Co-Head Joins Blackstone's $34B Tactical Opportunities Unit

Blackstone Tactical Opportunities Hires Joseph Cassanelli as Senior Managing Director Focused on Financial Services Sector Investments

Rhea-AI Impact

(Low)

Rhea-AI Sentiment

(Very Positive)

Tags

management

06/16/2025 - 10:30 AM

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Blackstone (NYSE: BX) announced today that Joseph Cassanelli, former Co-Head of Lazard’s U.S. Financial Institutions Group, has joined Blackstone Tactical Opportunities (“Tac Opps”) as a Senior Managing Director. Mr. Cassanelli will be based in New York and serve as an investment professional within Tac Opps focused on the financial services sector.

Chris James, Global Head of Tac Opps, said: “Joe’s deep expertise and relationships in the financial services sector make him an ideal addition to Tac Opps – as we continue to seek to deliver differentiated performance for our investors. We believe our scale and flexible capital are particularly well suited for today’s market environment, and look forward to working with Joe to continue serving as a trusted capital solutions provider to businesses in financial services and beyond.”

Joseph Cassanelli added: “I am thrilled to join Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, which has built a well-deserved reputation for creativity and innovation as a pioneer in hybrid capital with exceptional investment professionals. I look forward to providing bespoke capital solutions in partnership with outstanding management teams and companies across the financial services sector.”

Mr. Cassanelli spent more than two decades at Lazard, serving as a trusted strategic advisor to a broad range of global financial institutions. He has advised on more than half a trillion dollars of transactions, including many of the largest and most complex mergers, acquisitions, and strategic restructuring transactions in financial services. This included Blackstone’s IPO and C-Corp conversion, and numerous financial services transactions for Tac Opps and insurance-related transactions for Blackstone Credit & Insurance. He also served as Chairman of Lazard’s U.S. Fairness Opinion Committee. Prior to joining Lazard in 2002, Mr. Cassanelli spent several years at Wasserstein Perella & Co. and Deloitte.

Blackstone launched its Tactical Opportunities platform in 2012 – a strategy the firm pioneered – to invest across the landscape of private investment opportunities outside of traditional private equity and private credit. Tac Opps today has $34 billion of assets under management and is the largest hybrid capital solutions platform in the world. The Tac Opps team invests globally across asset classes, industries, and geographies, utilizing bespoke and innovative structures to seek to deliver compelling risk-adjusted returns by identifying and executing on attractive, differentiated investment opportunities.

Blackstone announced in 2023 the record close of Blackstone Tactical Opportunities Fund IV (“BTO IV”), which it is currently investing. Including other single-investor vehicles pursuing the same strategy, the combined BTO IV platform is currently expected to have nearly $10 billion of new capital in its fourth fundraising vintage. This is substantially higher than the BTO III platform and the largest-ever vintage of its kind. Marquee investments in BTO IV include CoreWeave, a specialized provider of critical cloud infrastructure pioneering the AI revolution, and the music royalty platform Recognition Music Group (f/k/a Hipgnosis).

About Blackstone
Blackstone is the world’s largest alternative asset manager. Blackstone seeks to deliver compelling returns for institutional and individual investors by strengthening the companies in which the firm invests. Blackstone’s nearly $1.2 trillion in assets under management include global investment strategies focused on real estate, private equity, credit, infrastructure, life sciences, growth equity, secondaries and hedge funds. Further information is available at www.blackstone.com. Follow @blackstone on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Instagram.