Stephen A. Schwarzman Biography

Stephen Allen Schwarzman (born February 14, 1947) is an American business magnate and investor. He is best known as the chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group, a private equity and financial advisory firm he formed in 1985 with former US Secretary of Commerce Pete Peterson. His personal fortune is estimated at $6.5 billion, according to Forbes.

Early life and education

Schwarzman was raised in a Jewish family in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, the son of Arline and Joseph Schwarzman. His father owned Schwarzman's, a former dry-goods store in Philadelphia.

Schwarzman attended the Abington School District in suburban Philadelphia and graduated from Abington Senior High School in 1965. He attended Yale University during the same period as George W. Bush, one year behind him (both were in the Skull and Bones society) and graduated in 1969. He then went on to Harvard Business School and graduated in 1972.

Career

Schwarzman's first job in financial services was with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a now defunct investment bank. After business school, Schwarzman started working at the investment bank Lehman Brothers, where he reached the rank of managing director at age 31. He eventually became the head of Lehman Brothers' global mergers and acquisitions team. In 1985, Schwarzman and his boss Peter Peterson started Blackstone, which originally focused on mergers and acquisitions.

With an estimated net worth of around $4.7 billion, Schwarzman was ranked by Forbes as the 52nd-richest person in America in 2011. He lives in a large apartment at 740 Park Avenue in New York, previously owned by the Mayflower descendent George Brewster and John D. Rockefeller Jr. Schwarzman bought it from Saul Steinberg in 2000 for just under $30 million. However, an article in the New Yorker claims that the apartment was purchased for $37 million.

On 13 February 2007, Schwarzman celebrated his 60th birthday at the Armory on Park Avenue. Guests included Colin Powell, Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg, and Cardinal Edward M. Egan of New York. The climax of the evening was a half-hour live performance by Rod Stewart, for which he was reportedly paid $1 million.

When Blackstone went public in June 2007, it revealed in a securities filing that Schwarzman had earned about $398.3 million in fiscal 2006. He ultimately received $684 million selling part of his Blackstone stake in the IPO, keeping a stake then worth $9.1 billion.

In 2007, Schwarzman was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

Schwarzman has served as an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Management and is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In June 2007, Schwarzman described his view on financial markets with the statement: "I want war, not a series of skirmishes. (...) I always think about what will kill off the other bidder."

On March 11, 2008 Schwarzman announced that he contributed $100 million toward the expansion of the New York Public Library, for which he serves as a trustee. The central reference building on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue was renamed "The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building".

In August 2010, Schwarzman compared the Obama administration's plan to raise carried interest taxes to Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, a comment for which Schwarzman later apologized.

Schwarzman Scholars

On April 21, 2013, Schwarzman announced a $100 million personal gift to establish and endow an scholarship program in China, Schwarzman Scholars, modeled after the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship program. A simultaneous fundraising campaign with a goal of $200 million will make the program the largest charitable effort in China's history with funds coming largely from outside the country. The Schwarzman Scholars program will be housed at Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious universities. Schwarzman Scholars has a world-class Advisory Board whose members include former leaders in government. The first class of 200 students is slated for 2016, upon completion of Schwarzman college, designed by Robert A. M. Stern, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture.

Personal life

• Schwarzman met his first wife, Ellen Philips, during his second year at Harvard Business School, where she 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:
  • Elizabeth (born 1976) - married in November 2005 to Andrew Curtis Right, with David M. Posner, the senior rabbi at Congregation Emanu-El of New York, officiating at the Central Synagogue.
  • Edward Frank (born 1979) - married in November 2007 to Ellen Marie Zajac, co-officiated by the Rev. Arthur Becker, a Roman Catholic priest and uncle of the bride, and Michael Matalon, the president of the Shaare Shalom Synagogue in Kingston, Jamaica.

• In 1995, Schwarzman married Christine Hearst, an intellectual-property lawyer who grew up on Long Island. She was the daughter of Peggie and Peter Mularchuk of Hicksville, New York. Her father was a fireman. She was recently divorced from Austin Hearst, grandson of the legendary newspaper tycoon Randolph Hearst. Rabbi Bertram Siegel co-officiated along with the Rev. Sam Matarazzo, a Roman Catholic priest. She has one child from a previous marriage.

Additional reading

• King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone.
• Greed and Glory on Wall Street—The Fall of the House of Lehman by Ken Auletta, The Overlook Press, New York, ISBN 1-58567-088-X