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Reuters
27 minutes ago
- Business
- Reuters
'Beloved' Blackstone executive LePatner killed in Manhattan remembered as industry leader
NEW YORK, July 29 (Reuters) - Blackstone (BX.N), opens new tab employees struggled on Tuesday to come to terms with the death of Wesley LePatner, one of the investment firm's senior executives who was gunned down late on Monday as she was leaving her Midtown Manhattan office. The 43-year-old mother of two tried to duck for cover behind a pillar in the lobby of 345 Park Avenue, the skyscraper office building that is home to Blackstone's roughly 2,000 New York-based staff, as a gunman sprayed bullets, people with knowledge of the shooting said. LePatner's death was at random. Neither she nor the firm, which invests more than $1.2 trillion in assets, was specifically targeted when 27-year-old Las Vegas resident Shane Tamura shot her and three others before killing himself, police told Blackstone executives. "Beloved" was a word Blackstone executives and community leaders used to describe LePatner, a woman colleagues said had pushed into the rarefied circle of top Wall Street real estate executives traditionally dominated by men. Blackstone President Jon Gray choked back tears describing her on a half-hour long global Zoom call Tuesday to tell the firm's 5,000 global staff of the gruesome event in New York, saying she was "one of the most beloved people at the firm." She "worked so hard and cared so much," and had "presence, poise, and a level of care that was beyond measure," he said, according to people who listened to the call. On Monday evening, she was leaving work to meet a friend when the shooting began. A Goldman Sachs (GS.N), opens new tab alumna, she came to Wall Street after graduating with highest honors from Yale University, where she met her husband, Evan LePatner, on their first day at the school, friends said. At Blackstone, one of the world's biggest private equity firms, she quickly rose through the ranks in its real estate business but was never too busy to offer advice, a kind word or to mentor younger colleagues, people who knew her said. She was a senior managing director and global head of Core+ real estate and chief executive of BREIT, the investment firm's real estate fund aimed at retail investors, ranking as one of Blackstone's most senior female leaders. As a philanthropist with deep roots in the Jewish community, LePatner sat on the executive committee of the UJA Federation New York and the Abraham Joshua Heschel School. She previously chaired the Women's Network at Blackstone, was also an elective trustee at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art and served on the board of the Yale University Library Council. Real estate-focused investment firm Osso Capital's CEO Olivia John, who had previously worked with LePatner at Blackstone, said she was an advocate for women in the industry. "She had a pure heart, was humble, and always wanted to do what was right," John posted on LinkedIn. LePatner was known as an even-keeled, thoughtful and measured colleague who navigated Wall Street's investment cycles with a steady hand. "She would smile through things and handle the challenging times with ease," said Christine Anderson, Blackstone's global head of corporate affairs and a friend of LePatner. The UJA honored her with a leadership award in 2023 after she led a mission to Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack. "Wesley was extraordinary in every way — personally, professionally, and philanthropically," the group said in a statement. At the UJA awards ceremony, Blackstone's Gray called LePatner an "outsized force" and a "giant in the real estate industry," adding, "for those who know her, that may not be technically correct at 5 feet tall." The LePatner family, in a statement, asked for privacy to mourn. "She was the most loving wife, mother, daughter, sister and relative, who enriched our lives in every way imaginable. To so many others, she was a beloved, fiercely loyal and caring friend, and a driven and extraordinarily talented professional and colleague," the statement said. "We will carry on the remarkable legacy Wesley created."
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Corporate America is on edge and hiring armed guards after the NYC office shooting
Corporate America is on guard. A deadly shooting at a New York City office tower on Monday has companies and executives boosting security across Wall Street and corporate America. Firms are scrambling to hire armed guards, conduct risk assessments, review security protocols, and reassure employees that they're safe, security experts said on Tuesday. "The phone hasn't stopped since this morning," Sean Crowley, the cofounder and CEO of CTS Research and Investigations, told Business Insider. CTS, based in NYC, is a partner and co-owner of Illuno, an app — "Like Uber for hiring security guards," Crowley calls it — that makes it easy to hire law enforcement for security jobs. Most of the calls, Crowley said, are coming from commercial and office property managers in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn who want to bring in armed security guards, clad in suits and ties, to post in their lobbies. "This will more than double our workload," said Crowley, a former NYPD captain and commander of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office detective squad. Corporate leaders are on edge after the second deadly shooting involving business executives in six months. Monday's attack, which played out at the New York City headquarters of the private equity firm Blackstone, left five dead, including real estate executive Wesley LePatner and the gunman. Monday's shooting followed the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. Companies are now rushing to reassure staff and bolster security as haunting images—like barricaded office doors—underscore growing fears that working for corporate America is no longer safe. Don Aviv, president of Interfor International, a security firm that works with asset managers, told BI on Tuesday that roughly 80% of his firm's clients had "retained additional security for their lobbies and foyers," with some hiking protective services through next week. "The issue with our society is that we're reactionary and not proactive," Aviv said. Heightened security comes at a cost Banks like Goldman Sachs and Citi sought to assuage employees about workplace security on Tuesday. Goldman Sachs "has robust protocols in place to keep our people safe every day, and is proactively assessing and monitoring the safety of the firm's global campuses to protect our people and facilities around the clock," Goldman said in a memo authorised by Jacqueline Arthur, head of human capital management and corporate and workplace solutions. "This includes our dedicated team of NYPD officers and security guards at the entrance of and within our buildings, who are trained to carefully manage entry to our offices and respond to any potential incident," Arthur said, adding that Goldman "is constantly assessing" its security protocols. Citi told New York-based employees on Tuesday that the firm had "increased the security presence and capabilities at our headquarters" within the past year. "This includes working closely with the NYPD," he said. "While we feel confident with the protocols we have in place, we will not hesitate to adjust if necessary," said the memo by Ed Skyler, Citi's head of enterprise services and public affairs. For companies seeking to boost security, the extra layer of protection won't come cheap. Two security executives in New York City say posting an armed former or off-duty police officer in your lobby will cost building managers $75 to $200 an hour or more. Hiring an armed escort to protect a CEO or other prominent person will cost in the $135 to $200 range per hour. For now, it's not prohibiting demand. Herman Weisberg said his security company usually hires about 15 armed former military and NYPD officers to protect CEOs and other high-profile individuals in New York and Washington, DC. On Tuesday, that number was up to 30 — and the managing director of SAGE Intelligence thinks it will grow further. Weisberg, a former NYPD detective, said he is also seeing an increase in requests for "threat assessments," including risks tied to former disgruntled ex-employees. "One firm," he said, "wants us to work with their customer service department on analyzing current people who are complaining 'outside the norm.'" He pointed to the back-to-back tragedies of the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare's CEO, followed by Monday's attack. "When this stuff happens more than once, I think anybody with controversial or, at this point, even non-controversial businesses are starting to look at security and take it a little bit more seriously."
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How is the Dow calculated? Here's a breakdown.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) is an index comprised of 30 stocks. Because of its structure, it doesn't always trade in sync with other indexes like the S&P 500 (GSPC) and Nasdaq Composite (IXIC). In the video above, Stocks in Translation Host Jared Blikre explains how the Dow works. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Stocks in Translation here. Today in Stocks and Translation, we're gonna take a look at how the Dow is actually calculated. Now, the Dow was born all the way back in 1896, nearly 130 years ago, before computers, before calculators, so this index of 30 stocks had to be easy to calculate. And for sake of simplicity, only the stock prices used. So the higher the stock price, the greater the weight in the index. And almost every other index, by the way, like the S&P and the Nasdaq, they use a company's market capitalization, but that gives that requires a lot more paperwork and more calculations. So here's the full method. Basically, you sum the prices of all 30 stocks in the index, and then you divide it by a number called the Dow divisor, which corrects for splits and changes in the components of the stocks. So anytime a stock has a stock split in the index, or when one stock is swapped out for another one, that Dow divisor will change. Now, here is a list of the four top stocks by price. Goldman Sachs is right at the top, with $723.65 as of the close yesterday. Microsoft is number two, Caterpillar is number three, Home Depot is number four. Now, United Health has a stock price of about $267 today, but before, uh, just a few months ago, it topped out at about 600, so it actually would have been number two in this list, had it not seen such a big slide. And I went in, and I calculated what the Dow would look like with different configurations here. So the orange line right here, which terminates last, that is the actual Dow. And then when you take out United Health in ye yellow, you have that line up here. And then I also took out Salesforce, Merck, and then Apple, because those were some of the biggest losers this year by percentage terms. And what you end up with is is a material materially higher Dow price without these big drags in it. And some of them can be actually quite big. And I also did another calculation here. I took, uh, the Dow price-weighted, that's the normal price weighting in white here, and then I also calculated it by market cap, starting at the beginning of the year. And when you do it by market cap, and I'm just gonna kind of trace this out here, we actually saw a lot more volatility by the lows. And again, this just includes all 30 stocks. I'm not taking out United Health or any of them. I'm just doing a different alternate calculation. So more volatility with the market cap weight, uh, version that we saw this year. Now, to sum up all the results, here's the market cap weighted 2025 year-to-date return. That came in at 7.3%. The actual price weighted number that everybody uses is 5.4%, and then the Dow minus United Health, that came in all the way up to 9.3%. And then you can take out Salesforce and Merck, and the numbers keep going up, and by the time you take out Apple, you have a Dow that's up 12.4%, and that's more than double the actual return of 5% and change. So something to think about here, uh, there's no guarantee that the Dow will always be calculated like this, but after 130 years, maybe they're just not gonna change. Tune into Stocks and Translation podcast for more jargon-busting deep dives. New episodes can be found every Tuesday and Thursday on Yahoo Finance's website, or wherever you find your podcasts. Related Videos Fed meeting: Why holding rates steady would be the 'right call' Market is seeing 'pockets of speculation,' not 'excessive' froth Berkshire trims VeriSign stake, Novo Nordisk craters, PayPal falls Market's 'fuel' for further P/E expansion is 'nearing empty' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Times
7 hours ago
- Business
- New York Times
Slain Blackstone Executive Was a Mentor to Women and a Leader at Work
Wesley LePatner, a senior executive at Blackstone who was among those killed in the shooting on Monday at an office tower in New York City, was a mentor to women in her workplace and her synagogue, according to friends, who praised her skills in balancing work, community and family. Ms. LePatner, one of her company's top-ranking women, possessed a stellar résumé: She was chief executive of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust and had spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs before joining Blackstone in 2014. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. She was committed to Blackstone, one friend said, and traveled often and worked hard, but also prioritized spending time with her husband and two children. On its social media accounts, Blackstone promoted Ms. LePatner as a role model for women, a position she embraced in the male-dominated industry, her friends said. She spoke on panels that focused on women in the industry, offering guidance. 'The goal is for you to embrace change,' she told a crowd at a symposium for women in real estate last fall, according to one real estate publication. Ms. LePatner was married to Evan LePatner, and the couple had a teenage daughter and a son who is in the seventh grade at a Jewish day school in Manhattan, where Ms. LePatner was on the board. 'She was a uniquely brilliant and modest leader and parent, filled with wisdom, empathy, vision and appreciation,' read a letter sent on Tuesday to parents whose children attend the school. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Associated Press
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
The Soul of a House, the Heart of a Mountain: The Forever House Opens at Customs House Museum
Artist Arline Mann debuts her solo museum show, inspired by the magical old Elder House estate, August 7th. CLARKSVILLE, Tenn., July 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Artist Arline Mann will debut her first solo museum exhibition, The Forever House, at the Customs House Museum on August 7. This evocative collection of watercolor paintings is inspired by the Elder House, a historic 1920s estate atop Elder Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Through vibrant washes and intricate layering, Mann captures the essence of a Tennessee mountain home suspended in time, inviting viewers to share its mystique and joy. The Elder House was built by George Saffarrans Elder, a prosperous businessman who acquired over 3,000 acres to create a family home. Over a century later, the house remains largely unchanged. When Mann and her husband, Bob Katz, became its stewards, the house's quiet grandeur and historical charm became Mann's muse. 'The Elder House isn't just a home; it's a storybook of craftsmanship and the spirit of those who lived there,' said Arline Mann. 'The reasons we chose the house – the wonder of it – are the same feelings I wanted to project in the paintings.' Mann blends realism with reverie. Her focus on architectural details—arched windows, worn stone and timeless woodwork—becomes softened by translucent layers that evoke nostalgia and atmosphere. The Forever House is both a tribute to the past, and a personal reflection on the spaces we inhabit and the human history and beauty they hold. Mann's artistic journey began after a distinguished career as a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs. Driven by the same traits that fueled her career, she quickly transitioned into the art world, with her work exhibited at the National Arts Club and The Salmagundi Club in New York, as well as regionally at Chattanooga's River Gallery. The Forever House marks a significant moment in Mann's artistic journey: a museum debut rooted in personal discovery, creative reinvention, and a deep reverence for place. Exhibition Details: For more information, visit About the artist: Arline Mann has a pinwheel-shaped career history – all her paths lead from the center, not anything that came before! Her first work years were in the New York theatre world, as an assistant to a Broadway/London producer and directing aspirant. Then came decades of corporate lawyering, most as a Managing Director founding and running the Global Employment Law Group at Goldman Sachs. And now as a serious watercolorist, looking forward to her first solo museum show this year. Media Contact: Ashley Marcos (480) 335-0506 | [email protected] Melissa Bill (786) 285-0426 | [email protected] View original content: SOURCE Arline Mann
