Blackstone Advisory Partners, a division of Blackstone announced that Karl Knapp has joined as a Senior Managing Director based in New York to head up the Group’s Global Industrials practice. He brings to Blackstone his extensive expertise, particularly in the paper and packaging, building products and diversified industrials sectors.
Knapp brings over 20 years of dedicated industry experience, most recently as the Head of the Global Industrials Group at UBS and a Vice Chairman of UBS’ Investment Banking Division. Transactions led by Knapp include: advising Anglo-American Corporation on its $8bn demerger of its paper and packaging subsidiary, Mondi; Stora-Enso on the sale of its North American Papers Division for $2.5bn; International Paper on its $4.3bn acquisition of Temple-Inland; and, most recently, advising Koch Industries’ Georgia-Pacific division on its $1.5bn acquisition of Buckeye Technologies.
Knapp started his career at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette and E. F. Hutton and Company, and worked as a senior banker at Morgan Stanley until 2002, when he joined UBS Investment Bank. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
