As head of the world’s largest private equity firm, Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, says there is more payback to his job than his firm’s historic outsized returns.
Speaking to members of peer-to-peer investment group TIGER 21 recently, Schwarzman said much of his satisfaction at Blackstone came from “participating in a lifetime learning group on deals. Our firm has enormous intellectual capital and knowledge base and you cant help but benefit from being around so many smart people.”
Schwarzman talked about investment strategy and his own deal-rich career in a free-flowing address at TIGER 21’s offices on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“Steve also made it eminently clear that investment success is not a short-term, quarter-by-quarter proposition, nor does it come exclusively from studying financial models and deal-books, but from a fundamental understanding of how businesses work and what constitutes genuine value,” said TIGER 21 president Tommy Gallagher.
The Blackstone Group, founded in 1985 by Schwarzman and former US Commerce Secretary Peter G. Peterson, is best known as a private equity investor. Based on the firm’s current holding of 38 businesses with more than $55 billion in aggregate revenues.
“These days the competition in the middle markets has become too crushing a $400 million dollar deal will draw dozens of bidders, whereas a quality $15 or $20 billion deal may only have one or two people competing,” Schwarzman said.