Ed Huang has been travelling extensively throughout Asia as Blackstone accelerates its wealth expansion in onshore Asian markets for its next phase of growth.

“We are growing everywhere in the region, and I feel very good about where we have come to despite everything that has happened in the markets,” Huang, the head of APAC for Blackstone Private Wealth, told Asian Private Banker in a recent interview.

Almost two years into the role, Huang has seen a continued strong demand in Blackstone’s core markets of Hong Kong, Singapore and now Japan, with Blackstone’s core strength in private equity continuing to perform well in Asia.

For the next phase of growth, the Blackstone veteran said he is focused on expanding the firm’s presence in other markets.

“If you look across Asia, there are eight or nine markets that we are active in. So, there are a lot of building blocks that we are putting in place this year that I feel really good about. And certainly from a business perspective, I feel like there’s strong demand and there’s growing awareness for alts and what we are doing. That’s all benefiting our business this year,” Huang said.

Japan continues to shine

Japan, in particular, has been a key focus for the firm in recent years, with most of its core strategies now offered in the region. The country, according to Huang, could be the second-largest wealth market after the US for the foreseeable future.

“In Japan onshore, we worked with a local asset manager to create access to our first local Yen-denominated strategies into the local public offer. That happened a few months ago, and we are very excited about the expansion of that,” Huang highlighted.

Huang added that the firm launched an infrastructure strategy through a local asset manager in Japan earlier this year, and that was a very successful raise.

Australia, Korea and more

Adding to the momentum in Asia is Australia. “We held our inaugural private market forum in March in Australia, and we have since launched an Australian dollar-dominated local unit trust of our private equity strategy. We are quite excited about the build-out of that,” he shared.

While the onshore Australia market is somewhat different to other Asian markets, Huang noted the firm has added more resources and will continue to expand to tap the Aussie wealth space.

Additionally, Blackstone has also been eyeing Korea. The firm recently launched its open-ended credit strategy in the country, and Huang stated that the firm is working to expand its resources, footprint, and capabilities.

“There are other markets that we are taking a really close look at, such as Taiwan, India and Thailand, where we already have some activity there,” he continued. “China is definitely on our radar”, but it is still early days in China for Blackstone Private Wealth.

“China is the largest market in terms of the amount of investable wealth in Asia. We already have our private equity strategy being distributed in the country through the QDLP programme, and we will hope to do more over time,” Huang said.

Strong demand for credit

Presenting a US$40 trillion opportunity, over the course of 2025 Huang has seen strong demand for private credit.

While some investors are concerned that private credit is bubble-like and have questioned deal flows due to US tariff policies affecting general partners, Huang emphasised that Blackstone possesses the “right scale” to effectively build its private credit portfolios.

As the largest alternative manager in the world, Huang said Blackstone has been very proactive in partnering and communicating with advisors and investors about developments in its credit portfolio, and the tariff impact has been relatively limited on both its portfolio and overall performance.

“We are still in the early stages of our broader business in private credit, and certainly for the types of lending that we want to do, we want to work with larger-scale businesses,” Huang commented.

Blackstone is still at the beginning of a significant amount of growth for private credit, he said, and there’s a lot of opportunity in the market. “If you look at the quality of our portfolio, it’s been quite strong.”

On deal flows, Huang believes what really matters is scale and investing in the right themes. Blackstone has a broad business with significant scale in its focus areas, allowing the firm to identify real opportunities.

“We have been really active this year. Our deployments this year are up quite a bit, so when we look at the fundamentals, we feel now is a really good time to invest,” he said.

Investing for the long term 

The secret for Blackstone staying ahead of market headwinds is “investing for the long term,” according to Huang.

“It’s very hard to know what’s going to happen in the short term. So, we take a long-term view in both our business and investing,” he said, adding the firm focuses on AI power, digital economy, and life sciences.

“They are all long-term themes. As we build our businesses, including expanding into core and onshore markets, these too are long-term goals.

“We are building our private wealth business to strategically support our partners across APAC, with education being a key pillar, and are hyper-focused on delivering performance for our investors – we think we are just at the beginning of a long ramp in Asia,” Huang said.