At age 31, Stephen Schwarzman was Managing Director of Lehman Brothers, one of Wall Street's leading investment banking firms, but after merging Lehman with American Express, he chose to strike out on his own. With one partner, two employees and less than half a million in start-up cash, he set out to compete with Wall Street's reigning giants. From these unpromising beginnings, Schwarzman built America's leading private equity firm, The Blackstone Group, and made brilliant strategic investments in almost every sector of the economy. After completing the largest leveraged buyout in history to acquire some of America's most profitable real estate, he took his firm public in the biggest initial public offering recorded to date, giving ordinary investors a chance to participate in Blackstone's unprecedented success. Scharzman's investments have made him a very rich man, but they have also made the the American economy more efficent and productive, rescuing troubled companies from insolvency and building small companies into big ones. In addition to creating the hottest firm in the hottest sector of the financial world, Stephen Schwarzman is one of his country's leading patrons of the arts and culture; he currently serves as Chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
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