Thursday, February 14, 2008

Happy Birthday Mr. "Blackstone"

Today is Stephen Schwarzman's 61st Birthday/Valentine bash, and as last year his Valentine's birthday party marked the top in private equity, today's should mark the bottom, as this time, his party is just being held at his 35 room townhouse in NYC. I just wonder if his intellectual property lawyer wife is going to be doing any pole-dancing?
http://wallstfolly.typepad.com/wallstfolly/2006/08/which_wife_of_a.html#more

If you have some time, here's a great read on him, in The New Yorker. I figured if you knew his wife, (who was married to Hearst wealth before him) pole-danced, you might read The Birthday Party article that James Stewart wrote about him.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/11/080211fa_fact_stewart

He's always selling. Just last week he said, "He doesn't feel rich." That's his sales pitch to the public to "reform" his image. It isn't that outrageous. He sold the banks to lend him billions to buy companies he leveraged up, with the downstroke on the companies provided by the money that pension funds gave him, of which he got a quarter of all the profits, after expenses.

But private equity will be back. The animal spirits have been hiding just a bit too long in this market. And Blackstone Group, (BX 17.63), at these prices; a smidge off it's yearly low is finally worth buying.

Page Six needs Steve's antics.

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