Blackstone Group LP hired Anthony Maniscalco to help run a new business that will buy stakes in hedge-fund managers, said three people familiar with the plans, as the firm tackles an investing area where institutions such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have had mixed results.

Maniscalco, 42, previously head of alternative-asset management in the investment-banking group at Barclays Plc in New York, will be part of the team that evaluates and strikes deals with fund managers, said the people, asking not to be named because the information is private. Peter Rose, a spokesman for New York-based Blackstone, which has $46.1 billion in its hedge-fund group, declined to comment on the hires.

Blackstone, the largest private-equity manager, is betting it can profit as hedge-fund founders seek to sell stakes in their firms as they cash out or plan for succession. Buying into a multibillion-dollar hedge-fund manager gives the purchaser a share of potentially lucrative fees -- typically 2 percent of assets and 20 percent of gains. That revenue can fluctuate wildly with investment returns and client deposits.

“The hedge-fund industry is tricky because of idiosyncratic risks,” said Aaron Dorr, head of New York-based Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP’s asset-management investment- banking group. “Investing in hedge-fund firms can be like venture-capital investing insofar as you will get some outsized returns and some duds.”

The risks include clients fleeing an underperforming fund or a manager unilaterally deciding to shut down, Dorr said.

Petershill’s Returns

Goldman Sachs, based in New York, raised $1 billion for its Petershill Fund in 2007 to buy minority pieces in hedge-fund managers. Investments in Winton Capital Management LLC and Capula Investment Management LLP, both headquartered in London, have paid off, with assets at least tripling since the bank made its purchases.

Some of the fund’s other investments have flopped. New York-based Level Global Investors LP closed a year after Petershill’s purchase, following a Federal Bureau of Investigation raid tied to the U.S. government’s broad insider- trading investigation. Level Global co-founder Anthony Chiasson was convicted of securities fraud in December.

Petershill has posted annualized returns of about 12 percent after investing about 60 percent of its capital, according to people familiar with the fund. Andrea Raphael, a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman, declined to comment on the fund.

Och-Ziff Stake

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