Tropicana, an important Lehman client that was merging with Beatrice Foods, asked Schwarzman to represent the company in the sale, even though Schwarzman had never worked on a merger. (A Tropicana executive had been impressed by a bond presentation Schwarzman made, and felt that, despite his inexperience, he could explain complicated aspects of a merger to a relatively unsophisticated board.) The $488-million deal, in 1978, marked Schwarzman’s emergence as a lead banker in M. & A., a field that was growing, along with junk-bond empires and a new entrepreneurial breed, the corporate raider.
Schwarzman was too new and too young to rival M. & A. strategists like Wasserstein, but his work habits and his competitive drive impressed clients and other bankers and lawyers in that tightly knit world. A former Lehman colleague recalls a concert at Carnegie Hall that he and Schwarzman attended with their wives. As soon as the lights dimmed and the music began, Schwarzman opened his briefcase, pulled out a sheaf of papers, and began working. Though his wife chastised him at intermission, he resumed working as soon as they returned to their seats. He typically was awake by 4:30 or 5 A.M., and often worked until 10 P.M.—a habit that continues today. Schwarzman was a showman as well. Another Lehman colleague told me that once, when he and Schwarzman were to call on Harry Gray, then the acquisitive chief executive of the industrial conglomerate United Technologies, based in Hartford, they travelled to the meeting by helicopter and limousine. When the colleague asked why they didn’t simply drive or take the train, Schwarzman replied, “You have to make an impression. ‘If you want my time, I’m so valuable this is how I travel.’ ” According to Schwarzman, Gray and United Technologies became a significant Lehman Brothers client.
Schwarzman was too new and too young to rival M. & A. strategists like Wasserstein, but his work habits and his competitive drive impressed clients and other bankers and lawyers in that tightly knit world. A former Lehman colleague recalls a concert at Carnegie Hall that he and Schwarzman attended with their wives. As soon as the lights dimmed and the music began, Schwarzman opened his briefcase, pulled out a sheaf of papers, and began working. Though his wife chastised him at intermission, he resumed working as soon as they returned to their seats. He typically was awake by 4:30 or 5 A.M., and often worked until 10 P.M.—a habit that continues today. Schwarzman was a showman as well. Another Lehman colleague told me that once, when he and Schwarzman were to call on Harry Gray, then the acquisitive chief executive of the industrial conglomerate United Technologies, based in Hartford, they travelled to the meeting by helicopter and limousine. When the colleague asked why they didn’t simply drive or take the train, Schwarzman replied, “You have to make an impression. ‘If you want my time, I’m so valuable this is how I travel.’ ” According to Schwarzman, Gray and United Technologies became a significant Lehman Brothers client.
Schwarzman says that he consistently earned the highest bonus of anyone in his Lehman Brothers “class.” He was made a partner in 1978, just six years after arriving at the firm. In 1980, the Sunday Times ran a profile of Schwarzman, with the headline “STEPHEN SCHWARZMAN, LEHMAN’S MERGER MAKER.” In the office the next day, he was beaming and brandishing a copy. “He loved the publicity, loved the attention,” a friend recalls. At Lehman’s annual firm outing that spring, at a country club, his colleagues had a copy of the article printed on a framed mirror, so that Schwarzman’s face would be reflected whenever he read it.
No comments:
Post a Comment