So did Steve Schwarzman make $5 billion last year or $351 million? Actually, it was closer to $1 billion

Yesterday afternoon the news was that Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman got $5 billion in compensation last year. But now AP is running the following correction:

In an earlier version of this story, the Associated Press erroneously reported that Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman's total compensation for 2007 was $5.13 billion. Schwarzman's compensation for 2007 was $350.7 million. In addition, he received $4.77 billion in stock -- representing his stake in the company -- in Blackstone's IPO in June.

That piqued my interest, so I started poking around Blackstone's 10-K. The compensation disclosure contained therein is extremely, perhaps deliberately, confusing. (Plus I'm not really clear why it's in the 10-K instead of a proxy statement, but that's another matter.) But here's the deal. Schwarzman actually got stock valued at $7.2 billion in Blackstone's IPO in June, in exchange for his existing "interests in the entities comprising our business." The $4.77 billion was just the portion subject to a four-year vesting period--presumably intended to keep Schwarzman from retiring prematurely to one of his five oversized dwellings. (“I love houses,” he told James Stewart of the New Yorker).

That stock is worth a bit less now--$3.7 billion as of this morning--so any account of Schwarzman's pay in 2007 probably ought to at least mention that immense paper loss. But it also ought to mention the $684 million of cash that Schwarzman took out of the IPO. That's not disclosed under compensation in the 10-K; it's down below, under the label "Transactions with Related Persons."

The AP's new $350.7 million figure represents the cash distributions that Blackstone says Schwarzman got in 2007, mostly carried interest on various Blackstone partnerships. Add the $684 million to that and you get $1.035 billion cash. Which is about $1.035 billion more than I made last year.