Steve Schwarzman: King of Wall Street

What It Takes®

Academy of Achievement

Film, Politics, Arts, Self-help, Sports, Society & Culture, Success, Literature, Humanitarian, Military, Social Justice, Technology, Podcast, Achievement, Music, Science

4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2018

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Take a peek into the mind of Stephen Schwarzman, the financier who established a little financial startup called Blackstone with $400,000 in seed capital, and transformed it into one of the largest investment firms in the world, with $434 billion under management. Schwarzman explains his rise from the son of a dry-goods store owner in Philadelphia to become one of the savviest and most strategic financiers in the history of Wall Street. (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2018

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	A lot of people figure out what they want to be when they're in college.
0:13.4	That's when Stephen Schwartzman had his revelation,
0:16.9	kind of sorta.
0:18.2	I figured out what I wanted to do, but I didn't know it existed.
0:22.3	And I figured that I wanted to be a telephone switchboard.
0:28.0	We don't have telephone switchboards just about anymore but I wanted to have coming in enormous
0:35.7	amounts of data I wanted it to go into a central processor and I wanted some kind of
0:41.5	output and I didn't know where in the world I could find a job like that.
0:48.0	Steve Schwartzman's college advisor was a little dumbfounded too,
0:52.0	but it didn't take long for Schwarzman to figure it out after he graduated.
0:57.0	But I was very lucky as soon as I sort of found this corporate finance field, I said, that's it.
1:03.9	By the age of 31, Steve Schwartzman was managing director of Lehman Brothers.
1:09.2	At 38, he and a colleague started their own little boutique investment firm.
1:14.0	They named it Blackstone.
1:16.0	That was in 1985.
1:17.0	As I record this episode, Blackstone has 370 billion dollars in assets. They deal primarily in private equity, real estate, and financial advice.
1:29.7	Schwartzman's personal fortune hovers somewhere between 12 and 13 billion dollars.
1:36.5	He brought home almost a billion just last year alone.
1:40.3	So how did the guy who aspired to be a telephone switchboard become the king of capital?
1:47.0	That's the subject of this episode of what it takes, a podcast about passion, vision, and perseverance from the Academy of Achievement.
1:55.0	I'm Alice Winkler.
1:57.0	Had a maid, this child is gifted, and I heard that enough that I started to believe it.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Academy of Achievement, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Academy of Achievement and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.