Inviting aggression

Posted by Marc Hodak on June 14, 2007 under Executive compensation | Comments are off for this article

The day I get back from vacation, I see this article about how much Stephen Schwarzman is worth–$7.5 billion.

Most people would think, “Wow. That’s a lot of golf balls” (or whatever). I thought, “Wow. Congress is going to see red on this one. They won’t be able to resist that bale of cash just sitting out there.” I figured that within a month, the other shoe would drop.

Well, as usual, I’m off on my timing. It took one day for Congress to react. It looks like the tax on carry is going to be amended for public PE firms. This won’t affect public partnerships of any other sort, just investment firms–the ones whose fabulously rich partners have been in the news. Yea, this measure has been considered for a while, long enough for Schwarzman to lobby for preferential treatment via a transition rule, but I can’t help but think that the pols who announced this might have taken a measure of the public mood in their timing.