It’s reporting season, and this year we’ve got two private-equity groups subject to “CD&A” disclosure: Apollo and Blackstone.
WSJ Private Equity Beat breaks down the firms’ disclosures head-to-head.
Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman beat Apollo’s Leon Black $350,000 to $100,000 on base salary, but Black wins on total comp $787,391 to -$409,217 (yes, Schwarzman apparently has to go out of pocket on comp due to accrued carried interest).
But we know what our readers care about.
The GCs’ comp after the jump.
Perhaps indicating the importance that Apollo places on good legal advice, John Suydam, chief legal officer, is among its five highest-paid officials, with a base salary of $400,000 and a bonus of $3.3 million. Together with other compensation, his total take was $4.9 million. Blackstone also values legal counsel highly, paying its CLO Robert Friedman a total of $3.3 million, largely due to a $3.2 million bonus, in 2009.
Suydam (SUNY Albany BA, NYU JD ’85) was an M&A lawyer at O’Melveny from 2002 to 2006. Prior to that he was the chairman of O’Sullivan (nee O’Sullivan Graev & Karabell) and managed that firm’s acquisition by (technically, merger with) OMM. He’s also on the board of the Big Apple Circus.
Friedman (Columbia, Penn JD) has the longer tenure. He’s been with Blackstone since 1999, after 25 years doing M&A at Simpson Thacher – including doing Blackstone work since its founding in 1985.
O’Melveny was a Quadrant III firm last year – revenues and PPP were down to to $826.6 million and, more importantly, a “mere” $1.47 million, respectively. So Suydam did substantially better than his former partners.
Simpson Thacher doesn’t seem to have been reported yet, but 2008 PPP were about $2.5 million. 2009 wasn’t likely to be a particularly good year, so Friedman came out ahead, too.
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