Jonathan Gray, president and COO of Blackstone, on the firm’s plans to start selling assets: “We are preparing to take some portfolio companies public … I would say the discussions have gone from theoretical to practical, and we are talking about things like timing … When you have this strong of an equity market, it’s almost like a magnet pulling companies out of the private market.”

Jorge Piñón, a Cuba and energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin, commenting on the widespread power outages in Cuba: “The government just doesn’t have the cash to buy crude oil, diesel or even cooking gas. It doesn’t even have enough money to pay for fuel shipments, and that’s sparking what we are seeing today. It’s an immense cash crunch.”

David Hoffmann, a Florida billionaire investor, on why he purchased more than 5 percent of Lee Enterprises, one of the largest U.S. new