Stephen Schwarzman in New York on March 12. Photo: Getty Images
It used to be that if you landed yourself a job at Goldman Sachs, you were a prince of Wall Street, the envy of everyone you knew. But these days, the folks at Goldman are probably starting to feel like every other chump who isn’t a hedge-fund manager or private-equity kingpin. In an SEC filing yesterday confirming its plans to go public, private-equity house Blackstone Group declared that its employees, on average, generate nine times more earnings than the rank and file at Goldman Sachs. Blackstone has 770 employees, each of whom produced an average of $2.95 million in net income last year, for a total of $2.27 billion. Production from Goldmanites was a relatively paltry $360,000. Could it be? A Goldman employee is worth just one-ninth of a Blackstone employee? Wall Streeters are yammering away about the fact that Goldman Sachs isn’t one of Blackstone’s underwriters, either. The smart money says it’s because Goldman is likely working on another private-equity shop’s IPO, perhaps that of Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts (KKR). Or it could just be that the folks at Blackstone don’t do business with people who don’t know how to put up the big numbers. —Duff McDonald
Blackstone Workers Produce Nine Times More Profit Than Goldman [Bloomberg]
Blackstone Group LP’s S-1 Filing[EDGAR/SEC]
