Blackstone's private wealth inflows improved in June, president says

NEW YORK, June 9 (Reuters) - Blackstone saw improving inflows from individual investors in June amid a pullback from funds that aim to give those people access to rarely traded private assets, the president and chief operating officer of the world's biggest alternative asset manager said on Tuesday.

"In the April and May period, April 1, May 1, we saw a slowdown, and yet by June 1 we were up 50%, back to the levels we were in the first quarter," Jon Gray told the Morgan Stanley U.S. ​Financials Conference in New York.

Private credit funds for wealthy individuals saw more withdrawals than new money committed at the beginning of this year for the first time ever. Switzerland-based Partners Group last week linked an increase in investor requests to withdraw money from private equity funds to a spillover of worries about private credit into other asset classes.  

Gray drew a distinction between appetite for credit and equity.

"We have lower flows in credit right now, given the noise, but when you look in private equity, June 1 we had the greatest, the best inflows we had since we launched the product," Gray said.

(Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Will Dunham)