Stephen Schwarzman on fundraising
From The story of Blackstone Group and other life lessons from founder Stephen Schwarzman · · Forbes India
“I had a sixth sense that something bad was going to happen and you know I'm also exceptionally persistent as a person and we were you know we gotten all these commitments and we were doing the legal work and and I was we had only two employees at that time and so I kept walking into the office probably 10 15 times a day with the person who was responsible for coordinating with all the lawyers and I'm sure I was exceptionally annoying because I was pretty anxious and we we did the closing on Thursday the final documents some people returned on Friday and on a Monday was the biggest collapse in the stock market since the depression was called Black Monday I think it was October 15 1987 and if we hadn't gotten all that money and committed it probably would have fallen apart.”
On , Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder at Blackstone Inc, spoke about fundraising during The story of Blackstone Group and other life lessons from founder Stephen Schwarzman on Forbes India.
About Stephen Schwarzman
Stephen Schwarzman, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone, has been discussing the firm's record financial results and its positioning in private markets. On the Q4 2025 earnings call, he reported that Blackstone achieved its best results in 40 years, with distributable earnings of $1.75 per share and a 20% increase in full-year distributable earnings to $5.7 billion. He has emphasized the firm's role as a business builder rather than a business buyer, citing its growth into areas such as AI-related infrastructure, where he stated Blackstone has become the largest investor globally with a portfolio of over $150 billion in data centers. Schwarzman has also addressed the expansion of alternatives into defined contribution retirement plans, describing it as an area of focus following a U.S. administration executive order, and noted a strategic alliance with Wellington and Vanguard to create integrated public-private investment solutions. Schwarzman has commented on market conditions and the private credit sector. On the Q1 2025 call, he described uncertainty around tariffs as impacting investor sentiment, while asserting that Blackstone's business model is designed for periods of stress, citing its low net debt and $177 billion in dry powder. He has pushed back against external assertions that private credit poses systemic risk, noting that Treasury and Federal Reserve leaders have not seen such risk, and argued that defaults in focus resulted from bank-led credits, not private credit. On the Q1 2026 call, he stated that the firm raised $62 billion in inflows in the quarter, the highest in three years, and expressed confidence that private credit products can deliver premium returns over liquid markets. In a March 2026 interview at Citi, Schwarzman discussed building a high-performance culture, depersonalizing decision-making, and supporting employees through mistakes, as well as his philanthropic work including the Schwarzman Scholars program.