The chief executive officer, chairman, and co-institutor of the Blackstone Group is Stephen Schwarzman. He formed the company in 1985 together with other successful business tycoons. A former Lehman Brothers managing director, he is as well a huge investor and a self-made billionaire.
Stephen Schwarzman, who wanted to help other businesses succeed despite the recession, has written an important piece on the Wall Street Journal called “Some Lessons of the Financial Crisis.” Already, worldwide leading financial regulators have started applying the practice of his seven principles for financial reorganization.
These principles are:
1. Consider having a general and a cross-border set of accounting principles.
2. Every nation requires a finance administrator at the political echelon, a central bank, and a financial services regulator that has a broad mandate.
3. There is a need for a complete transparency of financial statements. Nothing should be omitted.
4. There is also a need for a full disclosure of every financial instrument to a regulator.
5. Such a regulator should have direction in most all of the financial facilities taking part in the markets, regardless of their legal status, location, and charter.
6. Put an end to market-to-market accounting on hard-to-value assets.
7. Instead of living by a rules-centered system, try moving to a principles-centered regulatory system.