Corporate events don’t exactly conjure up feelings of joy — dry pastries, boring presentations, and pressure to look interested while lap-scrolling on your phone.
But in recent years, as businesses came out of the pandemic eager to push in-person gatherings, company expos have morphed into elaborate affairs with complex pyrotechnics and high-end catering.
Behind many of them is a Blackstone-owned company called Encore, which has through M&A and organic growth quietly taken over a huge swath of the corporate events market in recent years. Six years after Blackstone merged it into another portfolio company, it’s getting ready to go public.
There’s a straight line between Encore’s fortunes and the strength of the economy; marketing budgets are the first things to be cut when profits get squeezed, and Dreamforce-style balloon displays and high-end musical acts (like hiring Nelly)…
