Warning that economy will remain in dismal shape for “a while,”
Blackstone Group Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman urged people against buying real estate—even at seemingly depressed prices.
“You should keep away from that for now; if it looks cheap it will be cheaper,” Mr. Schwarzman said in response to a question from a member of the audience Tuesday at the Japan Society.
Mr. Schwarzman, whose firm acquired landlord Equity Office Properties in a $37 billion leveraged-buyout two years ago and promptly sold many of its buildings for top dollar, suggested potential real estate buyers sit on their hands. “Wait for vacancy rates to stop going up for a while,” he said.
In a similar vein, Mr. Schwarzman said that Wall Street firms will continue to contract and even more employees will be sacked, noting there remains “a surplus of people in a shrinking industry.”
“The glamour and endless upside that young people believed in when entering financial services is going to be compromised,” he said, adding that potential reforms in financial regulation may “change the world we’ve all lived in.”
Mr. Schwarzman’s remarks came a week after his firm disclosed that he cut his pay by 99.8% last year, to $350,000, as
Blackstone posted a $1.2 billion loss. Mr. Schwarzman pocketed $180 million in 2007 when he took public the leveraged-buyout firm he helped start 24 years ago.
In a candid speech to an audience mostly of bankers and diplomats, he expressed optimism that efforts by the Obama administration and leaders overseas to revive the global financial system would ultimately be successful. But he warned it would take time, and observed that regulators in different countries have very different ideas of how to go about it.
He also praised regulators for their efforts to revive the banking system after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September, saying that most people do not understand the seriousness of the threat of total economic collapse back then. “I don’t think people outside of finance understand what a close call this was,” he said.
Mr. Schwarzman estimated that the rout of stock markets around the globe that started in mid-2007 has wiped out as much as 45% of the world’s wealth. In addition to devastating the retirement plans of so many people, he said companies will probably have to start suspending payments to their employee pension plans and use increasingly precious cash to fund their operations.
In the meantime, he suggested people turn off their televisions and pull the plug on their computers, saying that media and the Internet have made the crisis worse by giving everyone the same bad news and gossip simultaneously. “The business stories went on to the front page,” he said. “That is never a good thing. Business stories should always be on the business pages.”
In an apparent reference to CNBC, he observed that there isn’t enough news in the day to fill “14 hours of programming,” leading TV personalities to “beat the drum.”
“I’m not bringing a message of complete gloom—the world goes on,” Mr. Schwarzman said. “It just looks terrible.”
