Blackstone’s Schwarzman received over $1 billion in pay, dividends in 2022

By Rhea Binoy and Jose Joseph

(Reuters) -Blackstone Inc Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman took home about $1.26 billion in pay and dividends for 2022, a regulatory filing showed.

Schwarzman received more than $1 billion in dividends from his Blackstone shares and $253.1 million in compensation, filing showed on Friday.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc slashed compensation for CEO David Solomon by 29% to $25 million for 2022, while JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon’s total compensation was unchanged at $34.5 million.

Schwarzman, who was among Wall Street’s biggest contributors to Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, said in November that he will not back Trump in 2024.

Higher interest rates, inflation, recession worries and geopolitical tensions from the Russia-Ukraine conflict have prevented private equity firms like Blackstone from selling assets for top dollar.

Blackstone’s net profit from asset sales fell sharply by 55% to $366.9 million during the fourth quarter, down from $817.5 million a year earlier.

The company posted distributable earnings of $6.6 billion in 2022, which was up 7% year-over-year.

“In 2022, Blackstone delivered record distributable earnings, $226 billion in inflows, and realized a number of the most profitable fund investments in our history,” a Blackstone spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Schwarzman owns about 230 million shares in Blackstone according to a filing from February, and the company paid $4.40 in annual dividend, filings showed.

The world’s largest private equity firm has been dealing with rising redemptions at its flagship real estate income trust (BREIT), prompting it to exercise its right to block investor withdrawals at 5% of the quarterly net asset value of the fund.

Blackstone ended the quarter with $974.7 billion of total assets under management and declared a quarterly dividend of 91 cents per share. Blackstone had set a target of reaching $1 trillion in assets by the end of 2022, an ambition it had brought forward from 2026.

(Reporting by Rhea Binoy and Jose Joseph in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Shivani Tanna; Editing by Sandra Maler)