A former executive at KKR & Co.’s global wealth unit has joined rival alternative-asset giant Blue Owl Capital Inc. to expand its offering to the world’s ultrawealthy.
Blake Shorthouse is joining the New York-based firm as global head of family capital, according to a statement Monday. He will be based in London and report to James Clarke, global head of Blue Owl’s institutional business.
Shorthouse, 53, left KKR after about a decade at the U.S. firm, where he led teams focusing on family offices worldwide — including in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Bloomberg News reported in January.
“We want to enhance family office relationships,” and Shorthouse has “experience cultivating trusted relationships with some of the largest single-family offices,” Clarke said.
Industry giants including Blue Owl, KKR and Apollo Global Management Inc. are targeting the world’s wealthy to fuel the next phase of growth for private equity, credit and other alternative assets. It’s an opportunity that has been turbocharged by hopes that President Trump’s administration will unleash a wave of deregulation and lure more retail investor cash into private markets.
Blue Owl, which had about $250 billion of assets under management at the end of last year, hired former Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. executive Rosamond Price earlier this month as head of its EMEA private wealth unit. It has also recruited Yoichi Nakamura from Algebris Investments for a similar role in Japan.
Blue Owl now has more than 250 clients in the family office sector, a rapidly expanding group of discreet firms that manage the financial affairs of the world’s superrich. The alternative-asset manager was formed in 2021 after Owl Rock, founded by Marc Lipschultz and Doug Ostrover, merged with Dyal Capital, founded by Michael Rees, through a SPAC deal.
Before working at KKR, Shorthouse held a senior role dealing with ultrawealthy individuals in Europe at Credit Suisse and earlier worked at UBS Group AG and Merrill Lynch.