Blackstone GSO

GSO has products for mezz, stressed / distressed, European direct lending, energy, CLO's a L/S credit HF and event driven or special sits. Their NYC and London offices are shared with Blackstone while their other three are GSO alone. They operate independently from the PE groups as they dwell in the credit arena but certainly all groups under the Blackstone umbrella leverage resources from one another from time to time. For example when Sungard went bankrupt, GSO's diligence load was likely lighter as Blackstone had owned the equity. Another example would be if they were looking at an opportunity that had previously been considered on the equity side, they might work together to some capacity.

Ostrover left to start Owl Rock and Tripp Smith left last year to start his own shop (they are the S & O of GSO) taking COO George Fan with him. Several others have left like Flannery who went to head Vista's credit arm and Mollett to head Angelo Gordon's distressed platform, my guess is those at the top haven't been happy with their economics. Blackstone recently had to sweeten the comp for the remaining founder, Bennett Goodman, to keep him around. So, key person turnover seems to be an issue as of late.

There are different teams for each of the different products they have but like how GSO would leverage the Blackstone platform, there is likely greater overlap within GSO's internal groups. I'm guessing, as is the case with Blackstone, the work is intense with long hours - probably working on deals across the cap structure (depending on group / fund) doing research, modeling, analysis and assisting with the execution process. I would assume pay is around $100-150k all in for a first year analyst and $200-250k for a first year associate but do not know for sure.