Yale University to Honor Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman with Leadership Award

New Haven, Conn. — Blackstone Group chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman will accept the “Legend in Leadership Award” of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute at a ceremony to be held tomorrow, June 14, at the New York Stock Exchange headquarters.

The award will be presented at the 55th gathering of the Yale CEO Summit of The Chief Executive Leadership Institute, the nation’s first CEO college.

The presenters of the award will include JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, New York Stock Exchange CEO John Thain, Yale senior fellow Roland Betts, Blackstone’s first investor Garnett Keith and the 106-year-old pioneering global financier Albert H. Gordon.

Steve Schwarzman is co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of The Blackstone Group, one of the largest alternative asset managers in the world.

Created in 1985 with $400,000 in assets and two employees, the Blackstone Group now employs 770, manages $88.4 billion in funds and following next week’s IPO, the firm will have a market capitalization of $32.4 billion. Earlier this year, its $39 billion purchase of Equity Office Properties was the largest private equity transaction in history.

Schwarzman has been involved in all phases of the firm’s development since its founding and approves all its capital commitments. He began his career at Lehman Brothers, where he was elected managing director in 1978 at the age of 31. He was engaged principally in the firm’s mergers and acquisitions business from 1977 to 1984 and served as chairman of the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Committee in 1983 and 1984.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he is chairman of the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is on the boards of various organizations, including The Frick Collection, the New York Public Library, New York City Ballet, the Harvard Business School Visiting Committee, the JPMorgan Chase National Advisory Board and the New York City Partnership Board of Directors.

Schwarzman holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and has served as an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Management.

Conference organizer, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of the Yale School of Management, commented:

“Having welcomed Steve Schwarzman to a dozen of our events, having worked at the two great universities where Steve Schwarzman earned his degrees, and having attended his same high school, I know that every institution touched by Steve has been proud of their association with him. Knowing many of his colleagues in the world of finance and private equity, no peer is more widely admired than Steve for his triumphant, high integrity institution-building and game-changing perspectives of evolving global markets. The four-generation panel of visionary, revered leaders presenting this award is as much a tribute to Steve as is the award itself"

The CEO Summit will be held this Thursday and Friday in the New York Stock Exchange’s 104- year-old headquarters. While the discussions of the CEO Summit are off-the-record, the press is warmly invited to attend this year’s unique and historic “Legend in Leadership Award” presentation to Schwarzman on June 14, at the NYSE, 18 Broad Street, at 4:15 p.m. Members of the news media who would like to attend are advised to arrive by 3:45 p.m.

The conference theme is “20/20 Vision for the Year 2020: Evolving Global Markets in the Next Dozen Years.” Distinguished global corporate leaders from across industries will engage in lively, candid discussions with regulators, judges, shareholder activists and scholars at this invitation-only leaders’ conference hosted by the Yale School of Management.

Sonnenfeld explained the value of this semi-annual gathering: “The reality of less-patient investor timeframes and shorter CEO tenures has added to the challenges of preparing for new markets and emerging technologies. Through our peer-driven exchanges, we will learn from the experience of great leaders who have triumphed over these hurdles.”

Among the conference participants are CEOs, presidents, chairmen and other top leaders from such firms as: JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, MBIA, Motorola, Thomson, Deloitte, Reynolds, Booz Allen, Wrigleys and Lennar, as well as regulators, management scholars, theologians, economists, psychologists, environmentalists, accountants and attorneys.

Conference sponsors include Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte & Touche LLP, NYSE Euronext, Thomson Corporation, RHR International, and Russell Reynolds Associates.

Past winners of this award include: The Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus, Vanguard founder Jack Bogle, McKinsey founder Marvin Bower, financier Albert H. Gordon, PepsiCo’s Roger Enrico, Coca-Cola’s Don Keough, Jim Kelly of UPS, Richard Teerlink of Harley-Davidson, Staples founder Tom Stemberg, Charlotte Beers of J. Walter Thompson, catalog retailer Lillian Vernon, Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson, Terry Semel of Yahoo!, Herbert V. Kohler, Jr. of Kohler Co., musician and impresario Quincy Jones and financier, entrepreneur and regulator William Donaldson.

The Chief Executive Leadership Institute is part of the Yale School of Management. It was founded in 1989 to provide original research on leadership and lively, current educational forums through peer-driven learning for accomplished leaders across sectors. To learn more about the CELI, visit: http://www.ceoleadership.org.

For an interview with Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, or to register for the Legend in Leadership Award presentation ceremony, contact Tabitha Wilde, 203-432-6010, or Bonnie Blake: 203-915-4783.