An article from The Huffington Post titled “Stephen Schwarzman and Bruce Wasserstein Spar at Fortune Breakfast” describes how Steve Schwarzman and Bruce Wasserstein delivered their personal insights over a breakfast conversation thrown by Forbes magazine. The two talked about Wall Street issues and how U.S. President-elect Barack Obama can lead the country out of its present financial crisis.

Steve Schwarzman is the Chairman and Co-founder of the private equity and financial advisory firm the Blackstone Group while Bruce Wasserstein is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lazard Group and its parent company Lazard Ltd., a global financial advisory and asset management company. While Steve Schwarzman is noted to be a Republican donor, Wasserstein is a well known Democratic donor. Given their contrasting political leanings, the debate of the two distinguished gentlemen drew a great deal of attention from the financial industry’s elite.

About Bruce Wasserstein
Bruce Wasserstein is an American investment banker, lawyer, and businessman who started his career as an attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. After which, he served as the Co-chairman of investment banking at The First Boston Corporation and then went on to form an investment banking firm, Wasserstein Perella & Co., where he served as its CEO from February 1988 to January 2001. Bruce Wasserstein later sold the firm to Dresdner Bank in 2001 and served as the Executive Chairman of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (from the merger of Dresdner’s UK unit Kleinwort Benson and Wasserstein Perella) for barely a year to join Lazard Fréres.

Bruce Wasserstein served as Head of Lazard and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Lazard Group from January 2002 to May 2005; and since May 2005, Wasserstein has served as Chairman and CEO of Lazard Group and Lazard Ltd. At present, Bruce Wasserstein serves as Chairman of Wasserstein & Co., LP, a private equity company with investments in different industries, mainly media, including the New York Magazine. Wasserstein has also authored several books and donated $25 million to Harvard Law School. Bruce Wasserstein’s net worth is estimated at about $200 billion.

In an article from The New York Times titled “Stephen Schwarzman’s Seven-Step Program” describes how Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, has designed seven principles that he believes would serve as effective guides for legislators in establishing financial system regulations.

For principles 1 and 2, Stephen Schwarzman outlines a call for “common accounting principles” across national boundaries and comparable regulatory structures in major global markets. His third principle is a call for absolute transparency for financial statements, stressing that nothing should be canceled out, while his fourth principle calls for “full disclosure of all financial instruments,” putting emphasis on the need of a regulator who will monitor all derivatives.

Stephen Schwarzman’s fifth principle is the call for regulation of all financial institutions, particularly bringing up hedge funds, which he considers as “major categories of borrowers.” For Principle 6, Stephen Schwarzman states that new accounting rules have brought trouble to financial firms, putting the pressure of writing down their asset values to “artificial, fire-sale prices.”

Finally, Schwarzman’s last principle is a call for a system of regulation that, instead of complex rules, is based on guiding principles joined with strong disclosure and supervision.

Stephen Schwarzman is an American businessman and investor listed by Forbes as one of “The 400 Richest Americans” of 2008. Stephen Schwarzman is the Chairman and Co-founder of the Blackstone Group, a global private equity, investment management, and financial advisory firm headquartered in New York City. He started his career at the investment bank Lehman Brothers. He rose from the ranks when he was elected Managing Director in 1978 and soon led the firm’s global mergers and acquisitions team.

In 1985, Stephen Schwarzman and partner Peter Peterson formed Blackstone with a $400,000 seed capital. Since the firm’s founding in 1985, Stephen Schwarzman has been actively involved in all phases of its development.

Steve Schwarzman also serves as Board Chairman of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and as member on the boards of several nonprofit groups.

Steve Schwarzman graduated with a BA from Yale University and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Article Source: New York Times Dealbook

Steve Schwarzman is a member of the Blackstone Group.

Harbus, the independent student weekly for the Harvard Business School, recently published an interview with Stephen Schwarzman.

Read up on the Bloomberg profile of the Blackstone Group.