Blackstone Set to Go Listing Crazy

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Buyout firm Blackstone(BX Quote) is planning to list up to eight companies it owns and sell at least five others, a report says.

The Financial Times reports Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone's founder, told investors in a letter sent on Friday: "We see the world changing once again. At least for private equity, the worst is behind the industry."

Schwarzman said Blackstone was in the process of selling five companies it owns at values twice as high as was estimated at the end of 2008, the Financial Times notes. Investors are likely to receive about $2.8 billion as their share of the profits, with about $1.2 billion coming from the expected sale of Kosmos Energy.

Blackstone is considering listing eight other companies in which it has invested more than $4 billion, during the next year, and the "expected valuation compares very favorably to our costs, in some cases significantly," Schwarzman said, the newspaper reports.

-- Reported by Joseph Woelfel in New York.

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