HBS Dean To Join Blackstone Board

The Blackstone Group, a New York-based private equity powerhouse, announced yesterday morning that Harvard Business School Dean Jay O. Light would be joining the firm’s Board of Directors.

Light, who was being courted by Citigroup for a similar post in early July, has been a member of the Business School faculty since 1970 and brings extensive experience from the world of financial academia to the renowned financial firm.

“[Light] was sought out by the firm after a careful review by senior management of dozens of prospects,” said John A. Ford, a senior vice president at Blackstone.

The Ohio native was selected to be the Business School’s dean in April 2006 by then-University President Lawrence H. Summers. This followed an eight-month stint as interim dean of the Business School.

Light has taken on a number of different roles during his time in Cambridge, including chairman of the finance unit and director of faculty planning. He is also a currently a director of the Harvard Management Company, the group that manages Harvard’s $36.9 billion endowment.

Light, a highly-regarded scholar who has written extensively about structuring complex financial transaction, also took a brief leave of absence in the late 1970s from the Business School to serve as the Ford Foundation’s director of investments.

“I am delighted to be joining the Board of one of the world’s leading alternative asset managers,” Light said in a statement. “I look forward to working with Blackstone’s management team as they set their strategy for taking advantage of opportunities in the world today.”

Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive and co-founder of Blackstone, expressed approval for Light’s decision to join the board.

“We could not be more pleased that Jay has agreed to serve on our Board,” Schwarzman said in a statement. “His extraordinary understanding of financial markets, his thoughtful academic approach, and his broad perspective on business and finance will be of great value to all of us at Blackstone.”

The relationship between Light and Schwarzman extends back to their first year at the Business School, when new faculty member Light taught a decision theory class taken by first-year student Schwarzman.

After graduating from the Business School, Schwarzman worked at Lehman Brothers, where he rose to chair Lehman’s mergers and acquisitions committee before leaving to start Blackstone with former Lehman chief executive Peter G. Peterson in 1985 with a $400,000 balance sheet.

As of June 30 of this year, Blackstone had a total of $119.4 billion of assets under management.

Light will accompany Richard Jenrette, the founder of investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette; Brian Mulroney, the former prime minister of Canada; and William Parrett, the chief executive of the professional services firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu as one of four independent directors on the board.

—Staff writer Prateek Kumar can be reached at kumar@fas.harvard.edu.