Schwarzman: Many of us learn through our own experience.
Following American Express Company's(AXP)
acquisition of Lehman Brothers in 1984, Schwarzman left the firm.
In 2014, it was reported that Schwarzman received $690 million in Blackstone dividends alone.
In 1985, Steve Schwarzman and Peter Peterson founded The Blackstone Group
with $400,000 of their own money.
Since launching his firm's first private equity fund in 1988, Schwarzman has significantly expanded Blackstone's business segments.
One year later, in 1985, Schwarzman and Peterson formed The Blackstone Group with $400,000 of their own money.
With no interest in corporate finance, Schwarzman took social science-related courses like psychology
and sociology during his time at Yale.
Born in 1947, Schwarzman grew up in a Jewish household in Abington,
Penn. and, as a child, attended public schools.
Never a fan of being a stock market speculator, Schwarzman wanted to make private equity investing
the heart of Blackstone's business model.
Dissatisfied by the level of transparency offered by the stock market, Schwarzman co-founded The Blackstone Group,
a private equity firm, in the mid-1980s.
After graduating from Yale in 1969, Schwarzman managed to get a job with an institutional asset
management firm called Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette(DLJ).
Since Schwarzman and Peterson had very little experience in the private equity industry,
investors were initially hesitant about giving them money to launch their first fund.
Schwarzman later found out that the executive was not
trying to be difficult but rather did not want to disclose certain details about the company due to insider trading laws.
While delivering a guest lecture on the global economy to a
class at his alma mater Yale University in 2008, Schwarzman admitted that he was not that good at mathematics.
Although he understood why the executive could not answer his questions, Schwarzman was uncomfortable with analyzing a potential investment
without having all the important and relevant information about it at hand.
With a wide range of global business interests in private equity, debt financing, hedge fund management,
and real estate acquisitions, Schwarzman is one of the most powerful people on Wall Street.