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It's official, the Blackstone ticker symbol will be BX. Deal Journal considered some others:

No-gos:

BLK. Logical as it sounds, it isn’t available. BlackRock, the former Blackstone unit run by Schwarzman pal Larry Fink, already took it.

B. Big, important companies like Citigroup or AT&T often take a one-letter ticker, but alas, precision metal component maker Barnes Group beat Blackstone to the punch. Then again, if they really wanted it, they could just buy the company.

STON. This one doesn’t work either, because of StoneMor Partners, the Pennsylvania cemetery operator. Plus, there’s the drug connotation, which a Republican like Schwarzman probably wouldn’t be too keen on.

TOP. Probably not a good idea to tip off all those potential investors that this could be a sign of where we are in the private-equity cycle.

Of course, BS is right out.

Here are a few that might work:

MINT. Isn’t this basically what they are now? But then they’d have to move to the Nasdaq, and Schwarzman seems more like an NYSE kind of guy. (Of course we’re assuming here that they’ll list on a U.S. exchange. Who knows — given his aversion to Sarbanes-Oxley, maybe they’ll go to London.)

KKR. What better way to get the best of Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Schwarzman’s rival for the King-of-Private-Equity title?

PE. As in private equity. Someone’s going to take it, so why not the first one to market?

LBO. See previous.

Posted by edelfenbein at March 27, 2007 2:23 PM