Blackstone has paid stockholders $5.32 a share in total dividends since the IPO, spokesman Peter Rose said. Schwarzman, who has a net worth of $10.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, hasn't sold any of his shares. Replacing banks "The industry has changed since they went public," said Marc Irizarry, a managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc who researches Blackstone. "Alternative-asset managers like Blackstone are acting as the new intermediaries in areas where banks used to be the main operators, and that's going to continue." In early 2008, Blackstone acquired GSO Capital Partners LP, a manager of leveraged loans and distressed debt run by former Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc executive Bennett Goodman. Later that year, as the US financial crisis sent shock waves through markets, GSO loaned to and invested in burdened companies around the world.