Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman may have made close to $1 billion in cash in 2017 thanks to the private equity firm’s strong performance.
Schwarzman owns 232 million Blackstone shares, and Crain’s New York guesstimates this netted him $851 million in dividends last year alone. The billionaire also gets payouts from Blackstone’s private funds. In 2014, when those funds paid out $43 billion to investors, Schwarzman netted $33 million. Last year the funds returned $55 billion, so Crain’s guesses he made $42 million this time around.
He is also entitled to a share of the funds’ carried interest, or performance-based fees, and based on his prior earnings Crain’s guesses he made $100 million from the so-called carry pool. All of that adds up to $993 million.
It helps that the carried interest loophole, which grants fund managers’ profits favorable tax treatment, survived the recent federal tax reform. Schwarzman serves as an adviser to President Trump, Crain’s reported.
Blackstone’s assets under management increased by 18 percent to $434 billion in 2017, according to the company’s latest earnings report. The company’s real estate funds are active investors in the New York market. The firm recently bought a 49 percent stake in Brookfield Property Partners’ One Liberty Plaza. [Crain’s] — Konrad Putzier