Portrait of Stephen Schwarzman

Rank #50

Stephen Schwarzman

Net worth $40.3B

Investments · United States

Born
Feb 14, 1947
Age
79
Source
Investments
Residence
New York, New York
Citizenship
United States
Marital status
Married
Children
3
Education
Master of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; Bachelor of Arts/Science, Yale University

Net worth over time

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.
  • 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.

Financial assets

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