Alec and Hilaria Baldwin pose for a photo in a kitchen.
Hidden from a main road in Amagansett, N.Y., Alec Baldwin’s farmhouse has been his refuge for three decades. The actor spent close to 10 years living alone, experiencing highs, like the numerous accolades for his comedic chops on “30 Rock,” and lows, like the messy breakup of his first marriage.
Alec and Hilaria Baldwin pose for a photo in a kitchen.
In 2012, he married the yoga instructor Hilaria Baldwin and they had a child and then another and another until they had a brood of seven, plus Mr. Baldwin’s oldest child from his first marriage to the actor Kim Basinger.
Alec and Hilaria Baldwin pose for a photo in a kitchen.
The three-story summer home for one on Long Island’s East End had to grow, and so did Mr. Baldwin, 67.
Alec and Hilaria Baldwin pose for a photo in a kitchen.
“This was Alec’s safe place for a long time before he met me,” said Ms. Baldwin, 41. “A place he would come during very difficult times in his life: his divorce, a custody battle, everything. So it has been a piece-by-piece process learning how to come together and create something here, which I think is normal in any relationship.”
Case 1:22-cr-00673-LAK Document 407-3 Filed 02/27/24
Page 3 of 4
programming staff used it for a Hackathon. Sam lived in it and – paid rent for that privilege – for
six months-about half of the time he was in the Bahamas. Even when he was officially living in
the apartment, he was more likely to be found elsewhere – often sleeping on a bean bag chair in
the office. Like everything about Sam, that wasn’t an affectation. He just doesn’t care about the
creature comforts that most of us value. He is similarly uninterested in hobnobbing with the rich
and famous and generally uncomfortable with attention. He did what he thought he had to do for
the good of the company, often at some significant personal cost to himself. What FTX spent on
advertising, travel, and housing is in line with what comparable multibillion dollar companies
spend, and a small fraction of what many do spend. For anyone who knows Sam, the popular
portrayal of him as a high-rolling, celebrity-secking, CEO driven by greed is simply bizarre.
I am the son of a small businessman and told Sam what I believe my father would have told him:
take some money out for yourself and put it somewhere safe. Or buy something special, so you
can enjoy life more. Others, including senior counsel, told Sam the same thing. According to
one business journal, by 2022, Sam had a net worth of more than $20 billion. He could easily
have sold a billion dollars’ worth of stock. He wouldn’t do that, though. He wanted to leave
every penny in the business to finance its growth. He had a salary of $200,000, which was more
than enough for his personal consumption needs. He had nothing “salted away” when the crash
came.
Barbara and I stayed with Sam in the Bahamas for the month following the collapse, and
witnessed firsthand his single-minded focus on getting money back to depositors, long after there
was any possibility he would be able to save any of his equity or wealth. About a week after the
implosion, Sam and I were speaking to a prospective defense counsel. The lawyer was aghast
when Sam told him that he was spending all of his time working with the Bahamian government
to get depositors their money back. The lawyer strongly advised Sam to focus on his defense.
“Are you aware,” asked the lawyer, “that even as we speak, there is probably a room of bright,
hard-working and ambitious people somewhere whose goal is to put you in jail?”
“Yup,” answered Sam, “and that’s pretty much irrelevant to me compared to helping depositors.”
I recognize that the Sam I have described is strongly at odds with how the public sees him, and
may seem unbelievable to the readers of this letter, including this court. I could add hundreds of
other examples of his kindness and genuine and deep concern for others, but I’m not sure how
much difference they would make, and doing so would surely try the patience of readers. I will
add only that were the social costs of saying anything positive about Sam at this moment in time
not prohibitive, I am confident many others who have known him throughout his life would
describe much the same person.
I want now to return to the challenges I referred to at the start, and their implications for
sentencing. Sam has struggled throughout his life to learn and control things most of us take for
granted, such as eye contact, small talk, and responding to social cues.
There is a positive side to this struggle. Sam’s life experience has made him tolerant of
diversity in the way most of us cannot be. Sam hired employees with communication
difficulties so great that they could not otherwise get or keep another job. I remember him
3
Ex. A-2
Case 1:22-cr-00673-LAK Document 407-3 Filed 02/27/24
Page 3 of 4
programming staff used it for a Hackathon. Sam lived in it and – paid rent for that privilege – for
six months-about half of the time he was in the Bahamas. Even when he was officially living in
the apartment, he was more likely to be found elsewhere – often sleeping on a bean bag chair in
the office. Like everything about Sam, that wasn’t an affectation. He just doesn’t care about the
creature comforts that most of us value. He is similarly uninterested in hobnobbing with the rich
and famous and generally uncomfortable with attention. He did what he thought he had to do for
the good of the company, often at some significant personal cost to himself. What FTX spent on
advertising, travel, and housing is in line with what comparable multibillion dollar companies
spend, and a small fraction of what many do spend. For anyone who knows Sam, the popular
portrayal of him as a high-rolling, celebrity-secking, CEO driven by greed is simply bizarre.
I am the son of a small businessman and told Sam what I believe my father would have told him:
take some money out for yourself and put it somewhere safe. Or buy something special, so you
can enjoy life more. Others, including senior counsel, told Sam the same thing. According to
one business journal, by 2022, Sam had a net worth of more than $20 billion. He could easily
have sold a billion dollars’ worth of stock. He wouldn’t do that, though. He wanted to leave
every penny in the business to finance its growth. He had a salary of $200,000, which was more
than enough for his personal consumption needs. He had nothing “salted away” when the crash
came.
Barbara and I stayed with Sam in the Bahamas for the month following the collapse, and
witnessed firsthand his single-minded focus on getting money back to depositors, long after there
was any possibility he would be able to save any of his equity or wealth. About a week after the
implosion, Sam and I were speaking to a prospective defense counsel. The lawyer was aghast
when Sam told him that he was spending all of his time working with the Bahamian government
to get depositors their money back. The lawyer strongly advised Sam to focus on his defense.
“Are you aware,” asked the lawyer, “that even as we speak, there is probably a room of bright,
hard-working and ambitious people somewhere whose goal is to put you in jail?”
“Yup,” answered Sam, “and that’s pretty much irrelevant to me compared to helping depositors.”
I recognize that the Sam I have described is strongly at odds with how the public sees him, and
may seem unbelievable to the readers of this letter, including this court. I could add hundreds of
other examples of his kindness and genuine and deep concern for others, but I’m not sure how
much difference they would make, and doing so would surely try the patience of readers. I will
add only that were the social costs of saying anything positive about Sam at this moment in time
not prohibitive, I am confident many others who have known him throughout his life would
describe much the same person.
I want now to return to the challenges I referred to at the start, and their implications for
sentencing. Sam has struggled throughout his life to learn and control things most of us take for
granted, such as eye contact, small talk, and responding to social cues.
There is a positive side to this struggle. Sam’s life experience has made him tolerant of
diversity in the way most of us cannot be. Sam hired employees with communication
difficulties so great that they could not otherwise get or keep another job. I remember him
3
Ex. A-2
Elon Musk employed an aggressive strategy—including the threat of a “thermonuclear” lawsuit— to contain the fallout after his endorsement of anti-Semitic rhetoric on X that prompted an advertising backlash at the billionaire’s social media company and some on Wall Street to call for his censure.
Where are home buyers paying the most? Mostly on the coasts, according to a new report.
Based on a ZIP Code–level analysis of closed home-sale prices, PropertyShark, a real-estate data site owned by Yardi Systems, found that, of the top 100 most expensive ZIP Codes in the U.S., 65% were in California.
On the East Coast, New York City had the highest concentration of pricey postal codes for home buyers, the report said.
The analysis of ZIP Codes was based on the actual sale prices of homes, not their asking prices, PropertyShark noted. “Whereas asking prices reflect sellers’ wishes, calculating medians based on sale prices reflects the transactional reality on the ground,” PropertyShark said.
The most expensive ZIP Code in the U.S., 94027, in Atherton, Calif., has been a longtime leader on the list, the report said. The median sale price of a home there was a cool $8.3 million. The Bay Area town, in San Mateo County, is home to some rich and famous people, including NBA star Steph Curry and his wife, Ayesha; tech billionaire Marc Andreessen and his wife, Laura; and others.
Curry and Andreessen have opposed denser and more affordable housing developments in their neighborhoods, earning them criticism as “NIMBYs,” for Not In My Backyard. “Atherton is almost exclusively zoned for single-family homes, with a one-acre minimum lot requirement dating back to the 1920s,” the PropertyShark report stated.
Across the country, New York City had the highest density of expensive ZIP Codes, with eight spread across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
The Hamptons town of Sagaponack (11962), a Long Island enclave popular with celebrities, ranked No. 2 on the list, with a median home price of $8,075,000.
Nationally, the median home price, meaning the price in the exact middle of the price range, was $394,400 as of September, according to the National Association of Realtors.
These are the most expensive ZIP Codes in America as of 2023, according to PropertyShark:
With China’s property bust threatening to sink the country’s economic recovery, Xi Jinping is looking for someone to blame.
After putting the billionaire founder of Evergrande, a heavily indebted property firm, under investigation for possible crimes, Beijing is expanding its probes to include bankers and financial institutions that facilitated developers’ risky behavior, people familiar with the matter say.
It seems hard to believe, and it’s one of those cases where definitions mean everything, but the average family in America has achieved millionaire status.
That’s according to the Federal Reserve’s latest authoritative survey of consumer finances, and it comes with lots of asterisks attached.
But first, the data: The mean net worth of the average American household, even adjusting for inflation, was $1.06 million last year. Compared with 2019, that figure was up 23%, boosted by rising house prices and a surging stock market SPX.
OK, here comes the but: The median, as opposed to the mean, net worth of the typical American household is just $192,900. That figure still represents an impressive after-inflation gain of 37% over those three years, but it’s more in line with what everyday experience suggests.
The median household refers to the grouping smack in the middle of rankings. The average, or mean, gets boosted by the likes of billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. American households by income in the top 10% have a net worth, on average, of $6.63 million, according to the Fed.
Showing the massive importance of home ownership to amassing wealth, those who own their residence have an average net worth of $1.53 million, compared with just $155,000 for renters.
The NCAA started allowing college athletes to make money from their name, image and likeness in 2021, after decades of student-athletes saying it wasn’t fair that they didn’t receive any money while the games they played in generated millions of dollars — especially football and basketball contests. And today, many of these athletes are not just making some extra cash on the side — they’re making millions.
These NIL deals are negotiated by college athletes and their representation, and typically involve leveraging an athlete’s brand and influence through promotional means. For example, a car dealership near a university campus may ask the college’s high-profile quarterback to do a commercial for them in exchange for a monetary payment or a car. Similarly, an athlete can make money from social media, depending on how big their following is.
Football players are among the college athletes who make the most money from NIL deals, followed by men’s basketball, women’s volleyball and women’s basketball. That’s because college football and basketball have multibillion-dollar TV contracts to broadcast games, while most other sports generally have lower visibility.
With that in mind, here are the college athletes who make the most money from NIL deals according to On3’s proprietary NIL algorithm, which is based on NIL-deal data, performance, influence and exposure
10. J.J. McCarthy, $1.3 million
J.J. McCarthy of the Michigan Wolverines in action against the Georgia Bulldogs.
Getty Images
As the junior quarterback for the Michigan Wolverines football team, McCarthy is one of the six college football QBs in the top 10 of NIL earners.
McCarthy sports 276,000 followers across his social-media platforms, and has deals with Alo, Bose and Bowman.
Tie-8. Bo Nix, $1.4 million
Bo Nix of the Oregon Ducks throws a pass against the Stanford Cardinals.
Getty Images
The senior QB for the Oregon Ducks has led his team to a perfect 5-0 start this season.
Nix has 219,000 followers on social media and NIL deals with 7-Eleven, Bojangles and Celsius. Nix is considered one of the top players in the nation and has the third-best betting odds to win college football’s Heisman Trophy on DraftKings DKNG, -2.52%
sportsbook.
Tie-8. Spencer Rattler, $1.4 million
Spencer Rattler of the South Carolina Gamecocks warms up before a game against the Tennessee Volunteers.
Getty Images
The South Carolina Gamecocks senior QB has one of the more robust NIL profiles in the nation. He has deals with Mercedes-Benz MBG, -1.23%,
Leaf trading cards and Raising Canes.
Rattler also has 578,000 followers across TikTok, Instagram META, -0.71%
and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
7. Angel Reese, $1.7 million
Angel Reese of the LSU Lady Tigers during the 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament championship game.
Getty Images
Reese was one of the breakout stars of the women’s March Madness basketball tournament this year. The Louisiana State University hooper led her team to the 2023 title and famously flashed a “you can’t see me” gesture in the title game.
Reese has brand deals with Airbnb, PlayStation and Intuit TurboTax INTU, -0.50%
and has appeared in ads for Amazon AMZN, +0.01%
and Pepsi Co.’s PEP, +0.59%
Starry. She also has 5.2 million followers across her social-media platforms.
During LSU’s magical title run last season, Reese set an NCAA single-season record with her 34th double-double against the Iowa Hawkeyes and was named the most outstanding player of the Final Four.
Reese is one of just two female athletes inside the top 10 in On3’s NIL valuation tracker, and the top college basketball player on the list.
6. Travis Hunter, $2.3 million
Travis Hunter of the Colorado Buffaloes signals first down after a catch against the TCU Horned Frogs.
Getty Images
Hunter was one of the college football players who transferred to the University of Colorado from Jackson State last season to follow coach Deion Sanders.
Hunter, a five-star sophomore prospect, plays on both offense and defense — as a wide receiver and a cornerback — a rarity in a high-level college program. He has 1.9 million followers on social media, a successful YouTube GOOG, -0.08%
channel, and endorsements with Celsius Energy Drink and 7-Eleven.
Hunter entered the 2023 college season as the most highly touted NFL prospect at Colorado, and Deion Sanders contends rival schools have attempted to poach him via lucrative NIL deals.
“People offered Travis Hunter a bag — about $1.5 million to try to lure him and buy him out of the transfer portal,” coach Sanders told 247Sports over the summer. “But Travis is not the kind of guy that can be bought. He isn’t built like that. Travis is a relational young man that is built on relationships and stability. And that’s what he wanted and desired. That is why he decided to ride and stay with us.”
If and when Hunter decides to declare for the NFL draft, he will likely have a multimillion-dollar contract as a rookie that could dwarf his collegiate NIL earnings.
5. Caleb Williams, $2.7 million
Caleb Williams of the USC Trojans warms up before a game against the Arizona State Sun Devils.
Getty Images
The University of Southern California QB is seen as a generational NFL prospect and the presumptive No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft, but he isn’t the top NIL earner.
Williams has 347,000 followers on social media, and brand deals with United Airlines UAL, -1.24%,
Alo and Beats by Dre.
Once the USC junior QB declares for the draft, his rookie contract will likely be set above $37 million, per Spotrac’s estimates.
4. Arch Manning, $2.8 million
Arch Manning of the Texas Longhorns warms up prior to a game against the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Getty Images
The Texas Longhorns freshman QB is one of several top NIL earners whose family plays a role in their fame. Arch Manning is the nephew of Super Bowl champion QBs Peyton and Eli Manning, and the grandson of former NFL QB Archie Manning.
Despite being a backup quarterback with no recorded statistics, the younger Manning has 277,000 followers on social media and has a brand deal with Panini. That deal involved him autographing an extremely rare one-of-one Prizm Black card that was auctioned off for $102,500, which was later donated to charity.
Manning was a standout high school recruit, ranked No. 5 in the nation in the 2023 class, and could have an NFL future.
3. Livvy Dunne, $3.2 million
Olivia Dunne of LSU looks on during a PAC-12 meet against Utah.
Getty Images
Dunne is the only college athlete in the top 10 of NIL earners who doesn’t play basketball or football. The junior LSU gymnast is the top female NIL earner in the nation and has brand deals with Vuori clothing, Body Armor KO, +0.62%
and American Eagle Outfitters.
Dunne is the second most-followed college athlete on social media with 12.1 million followers on Instagram, TikTok and X combined.
For many years Dunne was seen as the poster child for NIL deals, and she said earlier this year that she could make as much as $500,000 from a single post.
“What I love with certain brands is getting long-term brand deals,” Dunne said on the Full Send podcast in June. “Those are probably the best because you build a relationship with the brand and they want you year after year.”
2. Shedeur Sanders, $4.8 million
Shedeur Sanders of the Colorado Buffaloes celebrates as he walks off the field following an NCAAF game against the Arizona State Sun Devils.
Getty Images
University of Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders has become a phenomenon in the sports world. The 21-year-old junior made headlines after throwing for 510 yards and four touchdowns in Colorado’s season-opening shocker against No. 17–ranked Texas Christian.
Colorado has become the center of the football world since Shedeur’s father Deion took over as coach. Coach Prime’s team is currently 4-2 — the team was 1-11 last season, good for last place in its conference.
The quarterback has more than 2.3 million followers on social media, and has already inked several deals with big brands, including with yogurt producer Oikos 0KFX, -1.13%,
Gatorade and Mercedes-Benz. He has shown fans some of his new Mercedes cars on social media, too.
Overall, Shedeur Sanders’s NIL value currently sits at $4.8 million, according to On3, up from $1.5 million at the beginning of the year — that’s the highest value in all of college football. For context, that’s nearly twice the average NFL player’s salary.
1. Bronny James, $5.9 million
Bronny James playing at his high school, Sierra Canyon.
Getty Images
James has perhaps the most famous family member of any person on this list. He is the son of NBA legend LeBron James, and is currently set to begin his freshman basketball season at USC.
The younger James has yet to play a game at his new school, but will immediately be one of the most well-known players in college athletics. James has 13.5 million social media followers, the most of any college athlete, and has brand deals with Nike NKE, +1.10%
and Beats by Dre AAPL, -0.06%,
two brands his dad is also repped by.
Bronny James suffered cardiac arrest in July during a basketball practice and had to be taken to the hospital. But he’s on the road to recovery, and hopes to play basketball this season.
“Bronny is doing extremely well,” the older James said last week. “He has begun his rehab process to get back on the floor this season with his teammates at USC. (With) the successful surgery that he had, he’s on the up-and-up. It’s definitely a whirlwind, a lot of emotions for our family this summer. But the best thing we have is each other.”
The stupidest story of the summer may be over. Finally, mercifully.
Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire and chief executive of Meta Platforms Inc. META, -1.34%,
on Sunday appeared to pull the grown-up card — or at least the less-immature card — to scuttle a cage fight with Elon Musk, the even richer billionaire, Tesla Inc. TSLA, -1.10%
CEO and X owner.
From the start, it was a story that appeared to live mostly in Musk’s imagination. Yet it still sparked a media frenzy, as the prospect of two emotionally stunted billionaires publicly pummeling each other was not without some appeal.
But the proposed MMA-style fight apparently met its demise the same way it was born — through a lot of online bluster.
Author and journalist Walter Isaacson — who is currently writing a biography of Musk — tweeted a text exchange Sunday that he said Musk had sent him.
“Wanna do a practice bout at your house next week?” a text apparently from Musk reads. The reply, purportedly from Zuckerberg: “If you still want to do a real MMA fight, then you should train on your own and let me know when you’re ready to compete. I don’t want to keep hyping something that will never happen, so you should either decide you’re going to do this and do it soon, or we should move on.”
Zuckerberg later posted a more public burn on Meta’s Threads — the Twitter/X rival that sparked this whole thing to begin with — saying: “I think we can all agree that Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on…If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”
It was unclear what the two billionaires now plan to do with their spare time, if not fight each other.
Icahn Enterprises L.P.’s stock tumbled 30% on Friday, after the company said it’s cutting its quarterly distribution to $1 from $2 previously.
The company IEP, -23.23%
made the announcement as it reported a surprise quarterly loss with Chairman Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, blaming the news squarely on one thing.
“I believe the second quarter partially reflected the impact of short selling on companies we control or invest in, which I attribute to the misleading and self-serving Hindenburg report concerning our company, “Icahn said in a statement.
“It also reflected the size of the hedge book relative to our activist strategy.”
Icahn was referring to a report by short seller Hindenburg Research published on May 2 that accused IEP, Icahn’s publicly traded investing arm, of overstating asset values. Hindenburg also revealed that Icahn himself had borrowed from the company, among other issues.
That had been disclosed in a footnote to financials that Wall Street had overlooked.
The report shaved billions off IEP’s market cap and was firmly rebutted by Icahn, who recently said he has finalized amended loan agreements with banks that untie his personal loans from the trading price of his company’s shares.
Icahn said IEP has paid out distributions for 73 continuous quarters and does not intend for a “misleading” report to interfere with that practice.
“The payment of future distributions will be determined by the board of directors quarterly, based upon current economic conditions and business performance and other factors that it deems relevant at the time that declaration of a distribution is considered,” said Icahn.
On a call with analysts, IEP’s Chief Executive David Willetts highlighted the long-term “lumpiness” of the business, given its many moving parts.
“We have large wins at times and we have volatility, we’re not a company that necessarily has predictable cash flow, there are no guarantees,” he told analysts.
But IEP is not changing its strategy on distributions, he added.
The stock was headed for the biggest one-day selloff since it went public 36 years ago. The next biggest drop was 20.0% on May 2, when the Hindenburg Research report was released.
The company, which is 84% owned by Icahn and his son, Brett, offers exposure to Icahn’s personal portfolio of public and private companies, including petroleum refineries, car-parts makers, food-packaging companies and real estate. Its unit holders are mostly retail investors.
The fund has performed poorly in the past decade. For many years Icahn has publicly expressed suspicion of the bull market that raged around him. He shorted the stock market in a big way as a hedge against his long activist positions. Going into 2021, for example, Icahn’s investment fund had a short exposure of 142%, SEC filings show.
Hindenburg, the short selling firm founded by Nate Anderson, took a victory lap on Elon Musk’s X platform, the renamed Twitter, noting that it had predicted that IEP’s poor investment performance would eventually force it to cut the distribution.
Icahn has himself waged endless activist campaigns against companies and their management teams, and most recently succeeded in his effort to shake up management at gene sequencing test maker Illumina Inc. ILMN, +1.26%
In June, that company accepted the resignation of its Chief Executive and director, Francis DeSouza, ending a monthslong heated battle over its $7.1 billion acquisition of cancer test maker Grail that has faced regulatory hurdles, as the Associated Press reported.
Icahn had urged shareholders to vote out its chairman, John Thompson, and DeSouza. Company shareholders voted out Thompson in late May.
Past activist campaigns by Icahn’s company have generated billions of dollars for shareholders and helped boards and CEOs capture untapped value, Icahn has argued, citing Reynolds, Netflix NFLX, +0.14%,
Forest Labs, Apple AAPL, -4.80%,
CVR Energy CVI, -0.98%,
Herbalife HLF, -0.69%
eBay EBAY, -1.28%,
Tropicana, Cheniere LNG, -0.95%
and Occidental OXY, +2.11%
as examples.
IEP said it had a loss of $269 million, or 72 cents per depositary unit, for the second quarter, wider than the loss of $128 million, or 41 cents per depositary unit, posted in the year-earlier period.
Revenue fell to $2.684 billion from $3.796 billion.
The FactSet consensus was for income of 25 cents per depositary unit and revenue of $2.657 billion.
U.S. prosecutors have called an offsides on the British billionaire owner of Tottenham Hotspur soccer team, charging him with a “brazen insider-trading scheme,” in which he passed secret stock tips worth millions to his girlfriends, private pilots and assistants for years.
Joe Lewis, 86, who is one of the richest people in the United Kingdom, is accused of taking inside information about companies in which he was a large investor and handing it out to people around him for them to use to get rich.
“Notwithstanding his vast personal wealth, Lewis provided the inside information to his employees, romantic partners, and friends as a way to give them compensation and gifts,” federal prosecutors wrote in an indictment filed in New York.
Prosecutors say Lewis, who Forbes has estimated to be worth $6.1 billion, carried on with the scheme from 2013 through 2021, helping his employees and friends make millions of dollars in illicit gains.
Some people who benefited from Lewis’ loose lips included staff on his private, $250 million super yacht, the Aviva.
In some cases, prosecutors allege Lewis gave his pilots short-term, $500,000 loans to buy stock and then pay him back after they scored big based on his tips.
“Thanks to Lewis, those bets were a sure thing,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. “That’s classic corporate corruption. It’s cheating and it is against the law.”
Lewis’ private equity company, Tavistock Group, has investments in hundreds of companies ranging from agriculture, sports, resort properties and life-sciences businesses. The firm owns works of art by painters like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Gustav Klimt.
Investigators say Lewis shared information about publicly-traded life-science groups Solid Biosciences SLDB, +0.88%
and Mirati Therapeutics MRTX, -2.43%,
as well as beef producer Australian Agricultural Co. AAC, -2.79%
and a special purpose acquisition company, BCTG.
Prosecutors also allege that he hid how much of a stake he owned in cancer therapeutics company Mirati “through a pattern of false filings and misleading statements” in order to manipulate markets.
A message sent to representatives of Tavistock wasn’t immediately returned.
Making his fortune as a currency trader, Lewis became more widely known when he acquired the Tottenham football club in 2001 for $35.5 million.
He has lived as a tax exile in the Bahamas for years.
Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros is handing over control of his $25 billion financial empire to his son, 37-year-old Alex Soros.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news Sunday, which was confirmed by a spokesperson for Soros’ Open Society Foundations. In an interview with the Journal, Alex Soros said he shares his father’s liberal aims, including support for voting and abortion rights, adding “I’m more political” than his father.
The Open Society Foundations directs about $1.5 billion a year to humanitarian and democratic causes worldwide, and controls the majority of assets managed by the Soros family. OSF’s website says it champions solutions “that advance justice, equity and human dignity.”
Alex Soros told the Journal he intends to continue to use the family’s fortune to support liberal politicians and causes. “As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it, too,” he told the Journal.
In 2018, he penned an op-ed for the New York Times decrying the climate of “political demonization” and blamed Donald Trump for a rise in hate and extremism. “A genie was let out of the bottle, which may take generations to put back in,” he wrote.
George Soros, 92, had previously said he didn’t want any of his children to take over his foundation as a matter of principle, but told the Journal, of Alex: “He’s earned it.”
In December, Alex Soros replaced his father as chairman of the board of the Open Society Foundations, and he is the only family member on the investment committee overseeing Soros Fund Management, according to the Journal.
In the 2021-’22 election cycle, George Soros was the country’s No. 1 political donor, giving more than $178 million to Democrats, according to data from nonpartisan political money-tracker OpenSecrets.
“‘Icahn’s favorite Wall Street saying: “If you want a friend, get a dog.” Over his storied career, Icahn has made many enemies. I don’t know that he has any real friends. He could use one here.’”
— Bill Ackman, Pershing Square Capital Management
That was billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, resurrecting his longstanding feud with billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn in a tweet Wednesday.
Ackman was referencing the fallout from the recent report by short-selling firm Hindenburg Research that accused Icahn’s publicly traded investment vehicle, Icahn Enterprise Partners LP IEP, -13.83%,
of inflating asset values and causing his company to trade at a large premium. The report from May 2 has cost IEP about $10.9 billion in lost market cap, after the stock tumbled another 21% on Thursday.
Ackman said he is neither long or short IEP but merely “watching from a distance.”
But he seemed to agree with Hindenburg’s founder and CEO, Nate Anderson, who questioned margin loans extended to Icahn using his roughly 85% stake in IEP as collateral. Icahn has not disclosed the terms of those loans although he recently told the Financial Times that he used the money to make additional investments outside of his publicly traded vehicle.
“Over the years I have made a great deal of money with money,” he was quoted as having said. “I like to have a war chest, and doing that gave me more of a war chest.”
Ackman said the margin lender or lenders “must be extremely concerned with the situation,” particularly after IEP has disclosed a federal investigation of its business and corporate governance.
For his part, Icahn has called Hindenburg’s analysis “misleading and self-serving” and said it was designed solely to hurt long-term IEP shareholders.
Ackman compared the situation to that of failed investment fund Archegos, “where the swap counterparties were comforted by each having relatively smaller exposures to the situation.”
“The problem is that multiple lenders make for a more chaotic situation. All it takes is for one lender to break ranks and liquidate shares or attempt to hedge, before the house comes falling down. Here, the patsy is the last lender to liquidate.”
Ackman also expressed his surprise that Icahn has not disclosed the margin-loan terms, or even said who provided them. “My understanding of 13D SEC rules is that they require disclosure of sources of financing and even copies of financing agreements, although many investors ignore these requirements.”
Ackman also questioned how IEP’s large dividend yield is feasible, as it’s not supported by operating cash flows.
“The yield is generated by returning capital to outside shareholders, which is in turn funded by the company selling stock to investors,” said Ackman.
Icahn’s problem now is that his system has been outed by the short seller, Ackman wrote.
“Transparency is not the friend of $IEP having caused a more than 50% decline in the shares, which has caused Icahn to post more shares, now more than 65% of his holdings,” he said in the tweet.
The bad blood between Icahn and Ackman goes back to a business dispute the two had over a 2003 deal involving Hallwood Realty. The litigation between them went on for years.
But their animosity for one another hit a crescendo in 2013, when Bill Ackman publicly waged a $1 billion short-selling campaign against Herbalife. Sensing weakness, Icahn took a long position in Herbalife’s stock HLF, -5.21%
and helped deal Ackman significant losses on his bet over time.
The two claimed they had made up in 2014, sharing a stage at a conference broadcast by CNBC.
Ackman had previously had taken a soft shot at Icahn over the Hindenburg report, saying there was a “karmic quality” to it. But now their battle of Wall Street titans appears to be back in full force.
“‘I’ve always told people there is nobody who can really pick the market on a short-term or an intermediate-term basis. Maybe I made the mistake of not adhering to my own advice in recent years.’”
— Carl Icahn, activist investor
That’s Carl Icahn, legendary activist investor and billionaire, admitting in a Financial Times interview that he was wrong when he made a massive bet that the stock market would crash.
In 2017, his bet lost about $1.8 billion on hedging positions, according to FT calculations, that would have made money if asset prices had fallen. The trade lost another $7 billion between 2018 and the first quarter of 2023, according to the paper.
Icahn’s investing arm Icahn Enterprises LP IEP, +0.06%
started to short the market after the 2008 financial crisis, and became more aggressive in subsequent years. The company used a strategy of shorting broad market indexes, individual companies, commercial mortgages and debt securities.
“You never get the perfect hedge, but if I kept the parameters I always believed in . . . I would have been fine,” he said. “But I didn’t.”
Instead, regulatory filings show that IEP lost $4.3 billion on short positions in 2020 and 2021 as the market rallied off the pandemic slump, buoyed by the Federal Reserve’s massive stimulus.
“I obviously believed the market was in for great trouble,” Icahn said. “[But] the Fed injected trillions of dollars into the market to fight COVID and the old saying is true: ‘Don’t fight the Fed.’”
Icahn also explained what exactly he did with margin loans he borrowed from IEP that were recently highlighted by short-seller Hindenburg Research in a stinging report.
The loans were disclosed in regulatory filings in early 2022, but few seemed to notice at the time.
The Hindenburg report accused the company of inflating asset values and quested whether a margin call would send the company into a spiral if the stock price were to fall.
IEP’s stock did fall after that report — at the cost of about $6 billion of market cap.
Icahn addressed the report on the day it was released and offered an update on IEP’s recent earnings, saying he was fully in compliance with loan terms.
He told the FT he had used the money borrowed from IEP to make additional investments outside of his publicly traded vehicle.
“Over the years I have made a great deal of money with money,” he said. “I like to have a war chest and doing that gave me more of a war chest,” he added, referring to the margin loan.
There is currently no dispute over who wears the crown of world’s wealthiest person. It isn’t Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.
The net worth of Bernard Arnault, the founder and chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE MC, +1.01%,
stood at $210 billion as of Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. That makes him the world’s richest person by that marker, with an increasingly comfortable lead over Tesla’s TSLA, -0.48%
Musk, who also leads SpaceX and Twitter and whose wealth stands at $180 billion. At times the two have been in a neck-and-neck race for that top spot.
LVMH shares closed at a record €883 on Thursday, helping lift the French CAC-40 PX1, +0.52%
to an all-time high. That followed forecast-beating first-quarter sales from the luxury giant, thanks to returning China shoppers as COVID-19 restrictions eased, and rebounding international travel that drove duty-free sales. Up 7% so far this week, LVMH shares rose another 0.5% on Friday to €888.70.
The stock surge padded Arnault’s fortune by $11.6 billion on Thursday, the second-biggest single-day gain ever for him and a fresh record fortune, according to Bloomberg. Musk didn’t do badly.
He increased his wealth by $3.83 billion on Thursday, before Tesla and U.S. equities SPX, -0.21%
generally retreated a bit on Friday.
LVMH owns jewelers Bulgari and Tiffany, alongside fashion houses Louis Vuitton and Dior. Results released late Wednesday showed the luxury standard-bearer beating expectations across every division, led by fashion and leather goods, the latter of which is significant, Berenberg analysts observed.
“As the most profitable division, this also bodes well for margin development,” said Berenberg analyst Graham Renwick, in a note to clients on Friday.
“This performance sets the standard for [first quarter] luxury reporting and gives encouragement on China’s recovery from pandemic disruption. Overall, we think these results continue to demonstrate LVMH’s strong momentum and best-in-class execution — again reaffirming its high quality and strong track record, which we believe investors are favoring in this uncertain macro environment,” said Renwick, who reiterated a buy rating on LVMH’s stock and lifted his share-price target to €960.
The luxury sector got another confidence boost on Friday, as Hermès International SCA RMS, +1.52% revealed sales momentum in the first quarter, driven by a bump in tourism and new stores. The maker of the legendary Birkin handbag saw a 23% annual increase in first-quarter sales and backed “ambitious” organic revenue-growth targets.
Luxury stocks have seen an impressive rebound in 2023, after a weak 2022 — LVMH shares fell 6% in 2022 as travel restrictions in China and overall economic worries weighed on shoppers.
LVMH shares are up 30% so far in 2023, with Hermès up 36% and Christian Dior SE CDI, +1.46%
and Gucci owner Kering SA KER, +1.30%
up 26% and 21%, respectively.
As for Musk, his wealth is divided among his businesses. While Tesla accounts for $76 billion, Bloomberg estimates his share of SpaceX is worth $49 billion, and his share of Tesla is worth nearly $10 billion. He paid $44 billion for Twitter last year, after an attempt to wriggle out of the deal, and its current valuation is a matter of much speculation. Musk has fired thousands of employees and claimed this week that a return to profitability is now just around the corner.
Tesla is slated to report quarterly results next week, and some analysts aren’t optimistic due to persistent price cuts of its models.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos, who founded the e-retail behemoth Amazon, has some spending tips as Americans gear up for a holiday shopping season — amid four-decade high inflation and recession worries.
Here’s what he said:
“‘If you’re an individual and you’re thinking about buying a large-screen TV, maybe slow that down, keep that cash, see what happens. Same thing with a refrigerator, a new car, whatever. Just take some risk off the table.’”
Why did Bezos offer the tip for consumers and small business to go easy on big-ticket items? He gave one big reason.
“If we’re not in a recession right now, we’re likely to be in one very soon,” he said in the interview, picking up on his cautionary tweet last month that “the probabilities in this economy tell you to batten down the hatches.”
Bezos is currently executive chair at Amazon AMZN, -2.34%,
transitioning to the role last year as Andy Jassy took the reins as CEO.
“Critics have taken aim at these words of thrift coming from a man — now worth approximately $120 billion — who built Amazon into the online shopping bonanza.”
To be sure, Bezos is not alone is his worries about a potential recession as the Federal Reserve and other central banks fight higher costs by hiking interest rates.
But his advice prompted some guffaws on social media. In a nutshell, critics say these are words of thrift coming from a man — now worth approximately $120 billion — who built Amazon into the online shopping bonanza that lets consumers seamlessly spend money.
As Joshua Becker, a proponent of minimalism wrote on Twitter: “I didn’t hear him mention refraining from Amazon’s Prime Day deals or Black Friday offers, but I recommend adding those items to your list as well.”
Regardless of how anyone feels about hearing spending advice, particularly from one of the world’s richest people, there are some things to consider as events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday approach.
For one thing, maybe there are discretionary expenses where people can cut back. Many Americans are still spending briskly, as Walmart WMT, -0.34%
third-quarter earnings and October’s retail-sales numbers recently affirmed. Holiday-spending projections paint the same picture.
Americans will spend between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion on holiday-season sales this year, according to projections from the National Retail Federation. Last year’s holiday sales totaled $889.3 billion, the trade association said.
“During the third quarter, Americans’ credit-card balances climbed to $930 billion, the biggest annual increase in more than 20 years, according to the National Retail Federation.”
But Americans are planning for the holidays while credit-card balances are increasing — likely because credit cards are helping them keep up with rising costs.
During the third quarter, Americans’ credit-card balances climbed to $930 billion, the biggest annual increase in more than 20 years, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data.
While balances grow, so do credit-card interest rates. The annual percentage rate (APR) on new credit-card offers averaged 19.14% in mid-November, according to Bankrate.com. That beats the old record on APRs for new cards, set at 19% three decades ago.
The holiday shopping season is typically when Americans accumulate credit-card debt, pay the debts in the early part of the coming year and repeat the holiday-season debt the following year.
This year, the stakes could be higher if high credit-card bills arrive and a recession-induced job loss follows.
“It’s not the time to overspend and have a problem with paying your bills later,” Michele Raneri, vice president of financial services research and consulting at TransUnion TRU, -4.94%,
one of the country’s three major credit bureaus, previously told MarketWatch. “We know the economy is sending mixed messages.”
