The Man Who Earned $5B in One Year

March 12, 2008— -- NEW YORK (AP) - Stephen Schwarzman is Wall Street's $5.13 billion man.

That's how much money the co-founder of private equity shop Blackstone Group LP made in compensation for 2007, the year he brought the firm public, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That means Schwarzman's payday fell just shy of the gross national product for the South Pacific nation of Fiji in 2007, when compared to figures released by the International Monetary Fund.

Schwarzman - who earlier this week announced a $100 million personal donation to the New York Public Library - made $350,000 in salary but took no bonus in 2007, according to the filing. The Blackstone chairman and chief executive received $179,482 in other compensation, which includes use of a car and driver.

He received $4.77 billion worth of stock awards as part of last year's initial public offering of Blackstone's management division. Twenty-five percent, or about $1 billion, of those shares immediately vested, while the remaining will vest in equal installments over the next four years.

His stock holdings have declined in value since the June IPO, when shares initially sold for $31 a piece. Today, the shares are trading around $16 each.

Schwarzman also received $309.6 million in cash distributions - compensation given to partners for the performance of their fund - last year, prior to the company's initial public offering on June 21. He then received another $40.6 million in cash distributions for the balance of the year.

The figures included are drawn from Blackstone's annual report filed Wednesday. The company did not yet file its annual proxy statement, where it could provide additional details about his compensation.

The AP's total pay calculations include executives' salary, bonus, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.