Stephen Schwarzman
#51

Stephen Schwarzman

United States 79 years old Self-Made

Overview

Source of Wealth
Investments
Residence
New York, New York
Organization
Chairman and CEO at Blackstone
Education
Harvard Business School (Master of Business Administration)
Yale University (Bachelor of Arts/Science)
Marital Status
Married
Children
3

Assets

  • Blackstone Group
    231,924,793 shares @ -
    -
    BX-US
  • PJT Partners
    5,781,000 shares @ -
    -
    PJT-US

Biography

The son of a dry goods store owner, Stephen Schwarzman founded private equity firm Blackstone with fellow billionaire Peter Peterson in 1985.

Initially a boutique merger-and-acquisition advisory business, Blackstone has grown into the world's largest alternative asset manager, with more than $1 trillion in assets under management.

While Peter Peterson (d. 2018) retired shortly after Blackstone's 2007 IPO, Schwarzman still presides over the business as chairman and CEO.

Schwarzman got his start on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers; he wrote in his 2019 memoir about mistakes by management at that firm.

He started his first business, a lawn-mowing operation, at age 14, employing his younger twin brothers to mow while he brought in the clients.

About

Blackstone is a combination of its founders' names. "Schwarz" means black in German and Yiddish, while "Peter" means stone in Greek.

His Schwarzman Scholars, inspired by the Rhodes Scholarships, sends students from around the world to a one-year master's program at China's Tsinghua University.