Finance History | Blackstone — Four Hundred Thousand Dollars Behind 345 Park
· 1985
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Finance History | Blackstone — Four Hundred Thousand Dollars Behind 345 Park
kevin
People treat Blackstone as a Park Avenue landlord that was always a trillion-dollar alternative-asset firm.
The first partnership was two Lehman veterans and a thin envelope.
In 1985 Peter G. Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman left the wreckage of the American Express purchase of Lehman Brothers and put up 400,000 dollars of their own money. Schwarz is German for black. Peter comes from the Greek for stone. They refused to put both surnames on the door so later partners would not demand a new letterhead.
The first business was mergers advice, not buyouts. Neither man had led a leveraged buyout. Investors would not fund a first private-equity vehicle on that record. Advisory fees kept the lights on until the first fund closed after the October 1987 crash.
The mechanism was a founders' agreement that locked control in two pairs of hands. Peterson and Schwarzman took equal equity and wrote the partnership so a later faction could not start a war over the name.
BlackRock began under this roof. In 1988 Larry Fink's bond team sat inside Blackstone before spinning out. The same year Blackstone leased about 70,000 square feet, two floors, at 345 Park Avenue. The tower, finished in 1969 for Rudin, is still the headquarters. A 2024 lease expansion pushed the firm toward a million square feet in the same building through 2034.
The 2007 initial public offering raised about 4 billion dollars and sold only a sliver of the firm. Peterson retired after that listing. Schwarzman stayed as chairman and chief executive.
This pin is the long home, not the 1985 first desk. Walk the Park Avenue sidewalk. The lobby is private office space.
Photo: Americasroof, 345 Park Avenue, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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