A brand and a plan

Blackstone Group LP is launching a private capital fundraising effort out of its technology investment banking group. The firm, which opened a Menlo Park, Calif., office in September, hired Tom Kelly for the effort, which will help companies raise money from venture capital and growth equity funds.

"We found out about Tom through an investor," says Ivan Brockman, co-head of Blackstone's technology group. "We told him what we wanted, and he gave me one name, and one name only."

Kelly, 39, joins Blackstone from San Francisco boutique investment bank KEMA Partners LLC. He joined KEMA in early 2008 because he wanted to take "a more entrepreneurial route" but realized that having a larger brand name behind him was a distinct advantage. "You can be very entrepreneurial at a larger platform," he says.

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Kelly started his career focusing on private placements at Merrill Lynch & Co. and Robertston Stephens Inc. He then joined Banc of America Securities LLC's West Coast private equity private placement business and, before KEMA, headed the private capital group at Montgomery & Co.

Brockman, who joined Blackstone in September from Citigroup Inc., leads the firm's technology effort with Boston-based counterpart Chris Pasko. He says Blackstone wanted to create the fundraising group because the difficult environment plays to the firm's advantage. Companies that need capital will need help finding investors, while funds that raised money before the credit crunch hit will need help in deploying their capital. "It's not that easy to invest $1 billion, $5 million at a time," he says.

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