BX

Blackstone Inc.

One of the world's largest alternative asset managers, Blackstone invests money on behalf of pensions, insurers, and wealthy individuals across real estate, private equity, credit, and more. Founded in 1985 by Stephen Schwarzman and Peter Peterson, former Lehman Brothers colleagues, its name is a clever mashup of the two founders' names—"black" from the German for Schwarzman and "stone" from the Greek for Peterson. That naming quirk dodged the Wall Street tradition of just stacking two surnames on the door.