How much did private equity chief Stephen Schwarzman make last year? Depends who you ask. The Wall Street Journal and Reuters both reported that Schwarzman earned approximately $213.5 million in compensation in 2011. Businessweek estimated that the founder and longtime CEO of Blackstone Group made $148.5 million.
The number is closer to $750 million, said Paul Hodgson, an analyst at GMI Ratings who studies executive compensation. Hodgson wrote about the wide discrepancy in a blog post on Forbes.com on Friday. He said he arrived at his higher estimate by digging through Blackstone's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which he said buries a lot of the relevant detail about Schwarzman's compensation package in footnotes.
Blackstone argued that the money in question is cash that Schwarzman received from his ownership stake in the firm and doesn't count as compensation in any traditional sense. "It is totally absurd to say that Steve 'earned' $750 [million] in compensation last year or even came close to it," a Blackstone Group spokesman told HuffPost, via email. "The majority of that sum represents his ownership interest in Blackstone that has vested over four years."
Read all about it at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/stephen-schwarzman-billionaire_n_1322074.html
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