Blackstone is suing Italy’s RCS Media, the owner of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, in a dispute over the ownership of the media group’s headquarters in Milan.
The private equity giant filed a lawsuit in New York state court on Tuesday, claiming RCS chairman and chief executive Urbano Cairo tried to extort money from it by falsely claiming his company still owns the buildings Allianz agreed earlier this year to buy the property for about double what Blackstone paid in 2013, but the deal has been held up by Cairo’s claims on RCS’s behalf.
Allianz has told Blackstone it will not complete the sale until the dispute is settled.
