It’s a 20% bump from the year before, the majority of which came from dividends, and almost reached his 2022 high of $1.27 billion.
And the billion-dollar haul is probably a welcome relief for Schwarzman whose net worth has been in free fall since September last year, when the CEO’s fortune reached a high of $60.3 billion. Today, his net worth sits at $44.2 billion.
Blackstone’s shares have struggled as investors grow wary of mounting pressures in private markets. But the recent turbulence is nothing new for the billionaire businessman who has spent decades navigating economic cycles—and he has some words of wisdom for others stepping into the stressful world of finance.
Schwarzman started his path to the CEO role at U.S. investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. He had just graduated from Yale, with no expertise in finance—but the short stint was his first foray into a now lucrative career.
For a period of time, Schwarzman left finance for a job in the Army Reserve, before pursuing his MBA at Harvard University.
Lehman Brothers became his next employer right out of business school; there, he worked his way up over a decade to chair the mergers and acquisitions committee.
Schwarzman then decided to do his own thing; he founded Blackstone alongside former Lehman Brothers colleague Pete Peterson in 1985 for less than $500,000.
Fast-forward four decades later, and the 79-year-old CEO and chairman is still at the helm of the financial giant. But looking back on his career, Schwarzman advised young professionals against a work habit that completely wrecked his nervous system.
In cofounding and scaling the world’s largest alternative asset management business, Schwarzman said he was “taking on the world” and attempting a feat that’s never been achieved.
And that’s something he doesn’t want for future generations: “I didn’t want my children to have that level of desperation every day, and fear of failure.”
