Blackstone Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman takes home a record $1.27 billion for 2022, as the investment titan continues to build his fortune into one of the world’s largest.
Schwarzman, who owns about 20% of Blackstone’s stock, just got $1 billion in dividends. He also earned $253.1 million in compensation, most of which came through incentive fees and cut fund profits known as interest.
The annual haul, up from about $1.1 billion a year earlier, underscores Schwarzman’s status as one of Wall Street’s top earners — worth $30.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It also shows how tightly fortune is connected to the company he co-founded more than thirty years ago.
“I own a lot of stock, and I invest in all the funds, so the company is a family office,” Schwarzman, 76, said at an industry conference this year.
His successor as CEO, Blackstone President Jon Gray, will collect $479.2 million in 2022. This includes $182.7 million from dividends tied to a 3% stake in the company. It is an increase from the previous year.
Despite not being paid annual cash bonuses, he still collects more than the CEOs of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks, where compensation packages for top brass typically run into the tens of millions. Many bank CEOs are taking pay cuts in a difficult year for financial markets.
Indeed, Blackstone lowered Gray’s latest stock bonus, saying it would pay $30 million for 2022, down from $38 million the previous year.
Blackstone’s fundraising engine slowed last year, and market volatility hampered new deals. The crown jewel property fund for wealthy investors, Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, is facing a row of investors looking to exit, in order to limit redemptions.
However, Blackstone’s producers could earn more from the sale of deals in 2022 than the previous year. The sale of plum holdings, such as The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, makes profits available to shareholders. The company generates fee-related income as assets under management alone amount to $1 trillion.
“Blackstone has a performance compensation model built on long-term alignment with our investors,” a spokesperson said in a statement. The company generated distributable income and realized some of the most profitable fund investments last year, he said.
The dividend for 2022 rose to $4.40, up from $4.09 a year ago.
Last year, Blackstone’s stock posted a total loss of 40%, while paying dividends. In contrast, the S&P 500 returned a total loss of 18%. The stock has since delivered about 21.2% total returns this year, outperforming the S&P.
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