Stephen A. Schwarzman is the Chairman and CEO of Blackstone Group, a private equity and financial advising firm. The firm, of which he is also a co-founder, was started in 1985 by former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Pete Peterson and Schwarzman.
Schwarzman was born and raised in Pennsylvania. His father owned a dry-goods store called “Schwarzman’s” in Philadelphia. He attended Yale University for his undergraduate’s degree and then went on to graduate from Harvard Business School in 1972.
Stephen A. Schwarzman
IMG: via Blackstone Group
Schwarzman began his career working for Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, an investment bank, later moving on to Lehman Brothers investment bank. After being promoted to Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, Schwarzman continued to climb the career ladder, eventually becoming the head of the global mergers and acquisitions team there.
When Blackstone formed in 1985, its primary purpose was to carry out mergers and acquisitions, but has since expanded to become a fully functional private equity and financial advisory firm. After nearly 30 years in business, Blackstone is one of the largest private equity firms in the United States—alongside Henry Kravis’ and George Roberts’ KKR and David Rubenstein’s Carlyle Group. Today, Stephen Schwarzman is worth an estimated $7.7 B and is listed as #54 on the Forbes 400 list.
Stephen A. Schwarzman’s current pursuits include spending $100 million on a scholarship program (similar to the Rhodes Scholar program) that will send about 200 predominately U.S. students to study in Beijing each year. He’s also helping raise twice that amount to support the program. In the past, he’s also given $100 million to the New York Public Library, and he and his wife fund the parochial education of hundreds of students each year.
Blackstone Group went public in 2007, and since then it has enjoyed rising share prices—they climbed more than 60% since last August alone. Today, Blackstone manages about $230 billion in assets—as compared with $84.4 billion in 2007.
Schwarzman certainly has a way of rising to the top and staying there.
