The diminutive billionaire co-founder of the Blackstone Group, Schwarzman is one of the most powerful financiers on the planet and one of the 21st century's most unequivocal symbols of Wall Street greed.

Raised near Philadelphia (his dad sold linens and drapes) Schwarzman attended Yale where he was a member of the Skull and Bones Society, and started a ballet club to meet ladies. After attending Harvard Business School, Schwarzman joined Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, leaving soon to join Lehman Brothers, where he became part of a squad of bright young bankers in the M&A group. It was at Lehman that Schwarzman first worked with Pete Peterson: Schwarzman was a young, rising star of a partner and Peterson was the man in charge. Peterson was ushered out of the company in 1983, and in 1985 he teamed up with his young protégé to found Blackstone, with each man investing $200,000 to get the firm off the ground. ("Schwarz" is "black" in German. "Petra"-Peterson's original family name was Petropoulos-is "stone" in Greek.)

The first few years at Blackstone were slow going and the duo only closed their first buyout fund in 1989. But thanks to the model that Henry Kravis had so brilliantly established at KKR, Blackstone grew leaps and bounds and less than a decade after starting out, it had emerged as one of the most formidable private equity firms in the country. Schwarzman now serves as chairman and CEO of the firm, which has more than $100 billion under management and operates a variety of businesses, including a hedge fund, buyout fund, restructuring group, and real estate investment fund. In 2006, Blackstone raised $15.6 billion to form a new fund-making it the largest such investment pool ever raised by a buyout shop-and Schwarzman and his team quickly set out to invest the war chest. Following Blackstone's IPO in June 2007, he became one of the 100 richest men in America. According to Forbes, Schwarzman was worth $6.4 billion in 2008, which makes him the 53rd richest person in America. In 2011 Schwarzman made an estimated $750 million, and continues to head Blackstone. With Peterson largely retiring from the spotlight, and Schwarzman hitting 66, he is grooming Hamilton "Tony" Jones to be his heir apparent.

While most industry titans tend to to shirk the spotlight, Schwarzman has earned himself a reputation as a publicity loving narcissist. The billionaire financier famously posed for the cover of Fortune in March 2007 alongside the humble headline, "The New King of Wall Street." But it was his 60th birthday party in June 2007 that really turned heads. Schwarzman and his wife rented out the Park Avenue Armory and spent $3 million on a 500-guest extravaganza that featured star performers (Rod Stewart, Patti LaBelle), plenty of boldfaced guests (Michael Bloomberg, Barry Diller, Donald Trump) and, at the center of the room, a giant portrait of himself. (Which, it turns out, usually hangs in his living room.)

Schwarzman is a big time conservative, and is close friends with George Bush (a fellow Skull and Bones member, and dorm mate from Yale). He is not a big fan of taxing the rich (go figure), and is also a vocal supporter of Mitt Romney, with whom he made several highly lucrative investments while Romney was at Bain Capital.

He is married to Christine Hearst Schwarzman, and has two children from a previous marriage. The two like to wag their money around; in 2000, Schwarzman paid $30 million for the 740 Park triplex formerly owned by Saul Steinberg and John D. Rockefeller. Said to contain the largest living room in Manhattan (where a $5 million Cy Twombly hangs above one of the 11 fireplaces), the 20,000-square-foot Peter Marino-designed apartment has 37 rooms, 43 closets, a gym, sauna, steam room, billiards room, and screening room. The servants' quarters alone consists of three bedrooms, two baths and a dining room. Schwarzman also owns Four Winds, a 13,000-square-foot Palm Beach mansion-built for E.F. Hutton in 1937-that stretches from the Intracoastal Waterway to the ocean. He also owns lavish homes in Jamaica and St. Tropez, and an estate in Water Mill that cost him $38 million several years ago. To reach his homes in Jamaica and St. Tropez, Schwarzman relies on his private jet. He takes the Blackstone's Sikorsky helicopter to get to the Hamptons for the weekend.

[Image via Getty]