Meet the wealthy ex-Goldman Sachs junior banker and hedge-fund manager taking over as the UK's new prime minister
Hiya! Dan DeFrancesco checking in from NYC.
We've got famous authors yelling at Jamie Dimon, rich Russians heading to your favorite all-inclusive, and more people complaining about Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse infatuation.
But first, there's a new top man in the UK.
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1. Can Wall Street fix the UK?
The UK has a new prime minister — no, it's not the head of lettuce — and he comes from the world of Wall Street!
Rishi Sunak, a former finance minister, officially became prime minister on Tuesday after meeting with King Charles. The 42-year-old is the UK's first non-white leader and the youngest person to take on the role in more than 200 years.
But for the purposes of this newsletter, we're going to focus on his former life in finance.
Sunak's early career reads like a typical Wall Street mogul:
-Spend three years working as a junior analyst at a bank (Goldman Sachs). Check.
-Get an MBA from a prestigious university; bonus points if you get a fancy scholarship. (Stanford; Fulbright Program). Check and check.
-Return to finance to work on the buy side (London-based activist hedge-fund TCI). Check.
-Join a startup hedge fund (Theleme Partners). Check.
That checklist seemingly points toward a long career in finance, but Sunak had different ideas. In 2015, he won a seat in the British parliament and the rest is history.
A politician who started their career on Wall Street might not seem all that surprising in the US, but it's a bit of a novelty in the UK, at least at the highest of levels. Sunak is the first British PM with a background in hedge funds, according to Sky News.
He's also caught people's attention for being extremely wealthy. Sunak and Akshata Murty, his wife and the daughter of Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy, have a combined net worth of roughly 730 million pounds.
In fact, Sunak is so rich that people are asking if he's actually too wealthy to be PM. That's the type of criticism I'd like to receive.
Now, whether all that experience helps Sunak fix the dumpster fire that is the British economy remains to be seen. A report from iNews this June questioned the type of work Sunak did while at TCI, citing his lack of regulatory approvals.
But isn't that what politics is all about? Talking a big game but never delivering when it matters.
And remember, if all else fails, there is always the head of lettuce.
In other news:
Getty/Matt McNulty
2. Remember that UBS-Wealthfront deal that fell apart last month? Turns out that was a microcosm of a much bigger battle going on at the Swiss bank between its CEO and the head of the bank's wealth business. Bloomberg has the full scoop on the clashing ideologies of the two UBS execs.
3. Malcom Gladwell has reached his tipping point with JPMorgan. The best-selling author sent a letter to Jamie Dimon criticizing the CEO for how the bank has treated Gwen Campbell, his financial advisor, the Financial Times reports. Campbell is in the midst of a nearly two-year battle with the bank over accusations against JPMorgan for attempting to poach her high-profile clients.
4. Black founders received just 0.12% of the total funding in Q3, TechCrunch reports. Of the $150.9 billion that was invested in startups last quarter, according to Crunchbase, only $187 million went to Black entrepreneurs.
5. Nobody seems to want to launch new ESG funds, Bloomberg reports. The number of funds that have either launched or reclassified as ESG has dropped sharply this year. Find out why.
6. Andreessen Horowitz just invested in a startup that helps founders invest in Andreessen Horowitz. If your brain isn't completely in shambles, read this story from Bloomberg on the $40 million investment.
7. Don't be surprised if you run into some Russians on your next all-inclusive vacation. Grenada is proving to be an effective loophole for wealthy Russians looking to get US visas. Here's how it works.
8. Everybody wants Mark Zuckerberg to cool it on the metaverse. Altimeter Capital's Brad Gerstner, whose fund owns a stake in Meta, wrote an open letter to the CEO about how the company has "too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency."
9. Think TikTok is just a silly app that wastes your time and collects all your data? You're not wrong, but you can also get rich off it. A full-time engineer explains how he built a side hustle on the app.
10. The most incredible performance in sports right now is Manchester City's Erling Haaland. The Norwegian striker is on pace to smash seemingly every scoring record this season. We mapped out how his run this season stacks up against some of the other all-time greats.
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Edited by Jeffrey Cane (tweet @jeffrey_cane) in New York and Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.
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