Stephen Schwarzman

Stephen Allen Schwarzman is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is the chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm he established in 1985 with former chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers and US Secretary of Commerce Pete Peterson. 

• 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 grew into the world’s largest buyout firm, with $545 billion in assets.
• 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 writes 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.