Scott Besant, billionaire hedge fund manager, whom President-elect Donald J. The woman, whom Trump chose as his Treasury secretary, is planning to divest from dozens of funds, trusts and investments in preparation to become the nation’s top economic policymaker.
Those plans were released Saturday with the publication of an ethics agreement and financial disclosures that Mr. Besant presented ahead of her Senate confirmation hearing next Thursday.
The documents show the extent of Mr Besant’s wealth, whose assets and investments appear to be worth more than $700 million. Mr. Besant was previously a top investor in billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros and has been a major Republican donor and adviser to Mr. Trump.
If confirmed as Treasury secretary, Mr. Besant, 62, would lead Mr. Trump’s economic agenda of cutting taxes, rolling back regulations and imposing tariffs as he seeks to renegotiate trade deals. He will also play a central role in the Trump administration’s expected adoption of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
Although Mr. Trump won the election by appealing to working-class voters upset with high prices, he turned to wealthy Wall Street investors like Mr. Besant and Howard Lutnick, a billionaire banker whom he chose to be commerce secretary. . To lead your financial team. Linda McMahon, another billionaire, has been selected as education secretary, and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is leading an informal agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
In a letter to the Treasury Department’s Ethics Office, Mr. Besant outlined steps he would take “to avoid any real or apparent conflict of interest in the event of my confirmation to the position of Secretary of the Treasury Department.” .
Mr. Besant said he would close Square Capital Management, the investment firm he founded, and resign from his Besant-Freeman Family Foundation and Rockefeller University, where he had been chairman of the investment committee.
Financial disclosure forms, which provide a range of the value of his assets, show that Mr. Besant owns $25 million of farmland in North Dakota, which generates income from soybean and corn production. He also owns a property in the Bahamas which is worth $25 million. Last November, Mr. Besant built his historic pink mansion in Charleston, S.C., On the market for $22.5 million.
Mr Besant is selling several investments that could create potential conflicts of interest, including a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund; An account that trades the Chinese currency Renminbi; and his stake in All Seasons, a conservative publisher. They also have a margin loan or credit line with Goldman Sachs of over $50 million.
As an investor, Mr. Besant has long bet on the rising strength of the dollar and he has also bet against or “shorted” the renminbi, according to a person familiar with Mr. Besant’s strategy, who declined to be named. Discussed your portfolio on condition. , Mr. Besant gained notoriety in the 1990s by betting against the British pound and making his firm, Soros Fund Management, $1 billion. He also made a high-profile bet against the Japanese yen.
Mr. Besant, who will oversee the U.S. Treasury market, has more than $100 million in Treasury bills.
Cabinet officials are required to divest certain stakes and investments to avoid the possibility of conflict of interest. Although this can be a difficult process, there are some potential tax benefits.
The tax code includes a provision that allows securities to be sold and capital gains taxes on such sales to be deferred if the entire proceeds are used to purchase Treasury securities and certain money-market funds. The tax is deferred until the securities or money-market funds are sold.
Even when following ethics guidelines, questions about conflicts of interest may still arise.
Steven Mnuchin, his Treasury Secretary during Mr Trump’s first term, divested his Hollywood film production company after joining the administration. However, when he was negotiating a trade deal with China in 2018 – a key market for the American film industry – ethics watchdogs raised questions about whether Mr Mnuchin had conflicts of interest because he sold his interest in the company to his wife. Had given.
Mr. Besant was selected for Treasury after internal fighting among Mr. Trump’s allies over the job. Mr. Lutnick, co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s transition team and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, made a late lobbying effort to secure the role of Treasury secretary for himself before Mr. Trump chose him as Commerce secretary.
During the battle that unfolded, Mr. Besant’s critics circulated documents criticizing his performance as a hedge fund manager.
Mr. Besant’s most recent hedge fund, Key Square Capital, launched with much fanfare in 2016, raising $4.5 billion in investor money, including $2 billion from Mr. Soros, but it now manages much less. . The fund he ran in the early 2000s had similarly mediocre performance.