Peter George Peterson (June 5, 1926 – March 20, 2018) was an American investment banker who served as United States Secretary of Commerce from February 29, 1972, to February 1, 1973, under the Richard Nixon administration. Before serving as Secretary of Commerce, Peterson was also chairman and CEO of Bell & Howell from 1963 to 1971. From 1973 to 1984 he was chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers. Later in 1985, he co-founded the private equity firm The Blackstone Group, and served as chairman. In the same year, Peterson became chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a position he held until his retirement in 2007 after which he was named chairman emeritus. In 2008, Peterson was ranked 149th on the "Forbes 400 Richest Americans" with a net worth of $2.8 billion. He was also known as founder and principal funder of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting fiscal austerity. Early life Peterson was born in Kearney, Nebraska, as the eldest of three children to Venetia "Venet" Paul (Pavlou- Παύλου) and George Peterson (Petropoulos- Πετρόπουλος), both were immigrants from southern Greece. He had one younger sister, Elaine, who died of croup when she was one year old and a brother, John, who was the youngest. His father arrived in the United States at the age of 17 and worked as a dishwasher for Union Pacific Railroad and roomed on a caboose. In 1923, George opened and then ran a Greek diner named Central Café in Kearney after changing his name from Georgios Petropoulos. Peter began working at the cash register at age 8. Transferring out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in his freshman year, Peterson later received an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and The Kellogg School, graduating in 1947 with highest academic honors, summa cum laude. After college, Peterson was first married from 1948 to 1950 to Kris Krengel, a journalism student at Northwestern University. He joined Market Facts upon graduation, a Chicago-based market research firm, in 1948. In 1951, he received an M.B.A. degree from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, before returning to Market Facts as an executive vice president. Business career Peterson joined advertising agency McCann Erickson in 1953, again in Chicago, where he served as a director. He joined movie-equipment maker Bell and Howell Corporation in 1958 as executive vice president. He later succeeded Charles H. Percy as