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According to the company’s annual report released Friday, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwartzman returned home over $1 billion in 2024 as private equity titans saw revenue rise as investment activity recovered in the world’s largest alternative investment group.
Schwartzman’s revenues showed a 9% increase from the previous year. This was driven entirely by an increase in dividend payments from his huge Blackstone shareholdings. The Blackstone co-founder owns 19% of the New York-based investment group and receives hundreds of millions of dollars a year in dividends paid from profits.
Blackstone increased its dividend payments to shareholders by approximately 18% in 2024 as so-called diversified revenues. This is because metric analysts as proxy for cash flows increased on a similar scale. Blackstone historically pays at least 85% of such profits to all of its shareholders. This includes many other top executives, such as Schwartzman and President Jonathan Gray.
Overall, Schwartzman receives a $996 million dividend and a $84 million reward, most of which comes from a “famous interest” performance fee, which will be earned when Blackstone makes money. In 2023, he received about $900 million. This has declined over the past two years, when it brought back $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively.
Gray took home $247 million, with about 69% coming from dividend income from his shares. Chief Financial Officer Michael Che and Blackstone private equity officer Joseph Baratta brought back $48.9 million and $60.1 million, respectively.
Blackstone executives traditionally pay dividends almost all of their profits to shareholders, making them a great income in good years. Rivals such as KKR and Apollo Global have a more stable dividend policy and retain some of their profits to fund future expansions.
In 2024, Blackstone sold over $87 billion in assets, up 33% from the previous year, driving performance-based revenues. Its finances have also been strengthened by a recovery in financial markets, with Blackstone raising $171 billion in new investors’ cash and investing $134 billion. Both numbers were close to record volumes for the group.
“Blackstone has a performance-driven reward model built on long-term alignment with investors,” the spokesman said.
The wealth within Blackstone has been rising in recent years, supported by a rising stock valuation after being included in the popular S&P 500 index in 2023.
Blackstone’s top leaders have fallen slightly this year, with stocks rising by $13.5 billion in 2024 and market value skyrocketing nearly 50% to $214 billion.
Sharesurge has generated $1 billion in shareholdings each for an expanded group of executives, who hold $37 billion and $7 billion worth of shares, respectively, beyond Schwartzman and Gray. Chae and Baratta had their shares exceeded $1 billion last year only. They currently hold about $1.1 billion worth of shares, according to securities applications.
