In this success post, we are going to share the story of Stephen Schwarzman, an American financier and philanthropist. He is the chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm he co-founded with former Lehman Brothers CEO and US Secretary of Commerce Peter Peterson.
Stephen Schwarzman Early life and education
Stephen Schwarzman is the son of Arline and Joseph of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. His father owned Schwarzman’s, a former dry-goods store in Philadelphia.
He attended the Abington School District in Suburban Philadelphia and graduated from Abington Senior High School in the year 1965. He attended Yale University at the time of the same period as George W. Bush, one year behind him, and graduated in the year 1969. He then went on to Harvard Business School and graduated in the year 1972.
Stephen Schwarzman career
His first job in the financial services was with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a now-defunct investment bank. After business school, he started working at the investment bank Lehman Brothers, where he reached the rank of MD at age 31. He eventually became the head of Lehman Brothers’ global mergers and acquisitions team. In the year 1985, Stephen Schwarzman and his partner Pater Peterson started Blackston, which originally focused on acquisitions and mergers.
With an estimated current net worth of around $4.7 billion, Stephen Schwarzman was ranked by Forbes as the 40th richest person in America in the year 2011. He lives in a large apartment at 740 Park Avenue, in New York, previously owned by the Mayflower descent George Brewster and John D. He bought it from Saul Steinberg in 2000 for just around $30 million.
When Blackstone went public in the year 2007, it revealed in securities filing that Stephen Schwarzman had earned around $398.3 million in the fiscal year 2006. He received $684 million selling part of his Blackstone stake in the IPO, keeping a stake then worth $9.1 billion.
In June 2007, he described his view on the financial market with a statement: “I want war, not a series of skirmishes. (…) I always think about what will kill off the other bidder.”
In the month of August 2010, he compared President Barack Obama’s plan to secure carried interest taxes to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, a comment for which Stephen Schwarzman later apologized.
Stephen Schwarzman Personal life
He met his wife, Ellen Phillips, at the time of his second year at Harvard Business School, where he worked as a researcher and helped grade essays. She was the daughter of Jesse Philips, a wealthy Ohio industrialist. They were married in 1971 and divorced in 1990. They had two children.
Stephen Schwarzman Net Worth
As of 2018, he has a net worth of $11 billion. This makes him the 98th richest person in the world and 38th in the US.
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