Rashmi Madan

Spear’s Review

A Tennessee-bred banker who moved to London in 1999, Rashmi Madan is senior managing director and head of EMEA at Blackstone’s private wealth solutions division.

Madan tells Spear’s she is on a mission to ‘educate’ private bankers on the art of private equity; we learn over coffee that illiquidity isn’t such a bad thing.

She observes that UK bankers trade private funds on an exchange, ‘because they need daily liquidity’. But doing this can be damaging to portfolios, particularly those which are focused on growth. ‘As soon as you start trading private markets on an exchange, it acts like a public market,’ she says, adding that alternative assets will not give investors the benefits of diversification since they will not be protected from public market volatility.

But things are different at Blackstone, she emphasises: ‘We provide the liquidity, not the market ... ‘Historically, [daily] liquidity has been something that the regulators have promoted as being less risky, which makes no sense.’

Madan joined Blackstone in 2011 after serving as an executive director at J.P. Morgan for more than eight years. She started off as a senior managing director and the COO of Blackstone’s institutional arm, focusing on Europe. During this tenure, she promoted five women to managing director roles within the company. ‘That was huge,’ she recalls. She is particularly proud of one colleague with whom she’s worked for 17 years; Madan helped her grow from intern to analyst to managing director. The colleague eventually took on Madan’s role when she was appointed to her current position in 2021.

Blackstone, the world’s largest asset manager, offers access to institutional funds for individuals via its private banking partners, which include BNP Paribas and UBS. In early 2024 the company began construction on a new 226,000sq ft building in London that will serve as its European headquarters.