The Blackstone Group will buy a majority stake in the genealogy website Ancestry.com in a deal worth $US4.7 ($7) billion, according to a press release published Wednesday. Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, is the world’s largest landlord and Ancestry is the world’s largest genealogy website, with over 6 billion records on family history in the U.S. alone. Ancestry also provides DNA testing and has over 18 million DNA test results in its databases.
Ancestry officially operates in over 34 countries around the world, though it’s accessible from pretty much anywhere on the planet. The genealogy website was founded in Utah in 1996 and has over three million paying subscribers with revenue of roughly $US1 ($1.4) billion a year. The company has expanded into DNA testing in recent years and has partnered with drug companies to share data, raising plenty of eyebrows among privacy activists. The Pentagon has even warned U.S. military personnel against using DNA test kits available from companies like Ancestry and 23andMe.
Blackstone is buying a 75% stake in Ancestry, according to the Financial Times, and owns hundreds of thousands of properties around the world. Blackstone owns both commercial and residential real estate in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and South America, including high-profile hotels like the Bellagio in Las Vegas and the biggest apartment complex in Manhattan. The properties are often owned under countless subsidiary names.
The United Nations issued a report in 2019 accusing Blackstone of “wreaking havoc” with “aggressive evictions” and contributing to the housing crisis that was becoming apparent even before the coronavirus pandemic sent the global economy spiraling. Blackstone made a killing from the 2009 financial crisis, scooping up billions of dollars worth of apartment complexes and single-family homes in the early 2010s.
The CEO and co-founder of Blackstone, billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, contributes significant sums of money to the Republican Party and has close ties to the Trump regime, serving on President Trump’s business advisory council in 2017. Schwarzman previously called proposed tax hikes on businesses during the Barack Obama administration, “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939,” something that he later apologised for.
The Ancestry deal raises plenty of ethical questions to anyone who’s been paying attention and people are already telegraphing their concerns on social media about the deal. There’s no evidence that Blackstone has purchased Ancestry in an effort to discriminate against tenants based on race or national origin, but it’s not unreasonable to ask if buying a genealogy website will make unethical and illegal behaviour easier in a world where we know that housing discrimination is still rampant ” not just in the U.S. but around the world.
U.S. federal housing laws prohibit landlords from discriminating against potential tenants based on race, religion, and national origin, among other categories. But Big Tech companies like Facebook have made it much easier for landlords to do precisely that behind the scenes. Back in 2016, an investigation by ProPublica found that Facebook allowed property owners to target ads based on race, a clear violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Facebook called it a technical glitch, but didn’t abolish the practice until 2019 following a slew of lawsuits from civil rights organisations.
For whatever it’s worth, Blackstone says it’s just interested in digital consumer businesses and wants to invest more money into data development for the company.
“We are very excited to partner with Ancestry and its management team. We believe Ancestry has significant runway for further growth as people of all ages and backgrounds become increasingly interested in learning more about their family histories and themselves,” David Kestnbaum, a Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, said in a statement published online.
“We look forward to investing behind further data, functionality, and product development across Ancestry’s market leading platform to continue to provide a differentiated service. Our investment is a prime example of Blackstone’s continued, high-conviction focus on investing in growing, digital consumer businesses, which are resilient in the current environment and beyond.”
Will individual property managers who operate under Blackstone have access to Ancestry’s DNA and genealogy records? Technically, any landlord can already use many of the company’s records today, just as they use commercial background checks and consumer-facing products like Google’s search engine. But it’s perfectly rational to ask seemingly paranoid questions during an increasingly paranoid time.
The U.S. does, after all, currently have a president who was pursued by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1973 for housing discrimination at his rental properties in New York, long before the internet and DNA testing were available to the masses. President Trump and his father used to write a big “C” on the rental applications of Black people. What did the “C” stand for? Coloured.