Blackstone clients asked to pull $4.5bn from a closely followed real estate fund in March, even as the firm’s executives were promoting investment opportunities in the sector that they said would arise from US economic turbulence.

Withdrawal requests at the $70bn fund, called Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, or Breit, rose 15 per cent in March after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, to $4.5bn. It was the fifth straight month that the firm has limited redemptions.

The redemptions signal that investor concern remained high even after Blackstone president Jonathan Gray and other top executives convened more than 200 investors on March 8 and March 9 to showcase forecasts of new investment opportunities from the growing financial upheaval. SVB was taken over by regulators on March 10 after announcing big losses on securities sales and a failed equity raise.