Skift Power Rankings: Jonathan Gray

Skift Take

He took a risky bet in 2007 on Hilton and it just may have been the “best leveraged buyout ever.”

Meghna Maharishi

Jonathan Gray is a heavyweight in finance. He’s the chief operating officer of Blackstone, the largest private equity firm in the world, which manages over $1 trillion in assets. Gray is also widely seen as a successor to the firm’s CEO Stephen Schwarzman. 

But Gray is also heavily influential in the travel industry. On top of his work at Blackstone, he’s the chairman of Hilton Hotels & Resorts, one of the largest hospitality companies in the world. 

Blackstone bought Hilton in 2007 for $26 billion during the peak of the market, and is largely credited with turning it around in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis when the hotel chain started to hemorrhage cash. 

The bet on Hilton turned out to be the “best leveraged buyout ever,” according to Bloomberg. Blackstone took Hilton private before raising $2.34 billion in 2013 for its IPO, the largest for a hotel group. 

Under Gray, Blackstone brought in new leadership for Hilton, including hiring now-CEO Chris Nassetta. It also wanted Hilton to build its own brands rather than acquire them. Now, Hilton is home to some of the most successful hotel brands like Curio, Canopy, Tru and Spark — and the majority were built in-house. 

“When we look at things, it’s not that we don’t like acquisitions,” Nassetta said on the strategy at the Skift Global Forum East in Dubai in 2022. “We don’t want to have to go fix other people’s problems when we already have scale and we become very good at organic brand development.”

Gray said in an interview with Forbes that his experience with Hilton taught him about opportunities in unlikely bets.“It should have been a career shortening moment,” Gray joked in the interview with Forbes about buying Hilton right before the crisis.