Key Square Capital Management founder Scott Bessent was tapped late Friday by President-elect Donald Trump to be Treasury secretary, bringing a long track record from his time at Wall Street hedge funds.
Little has been reported about Bessent's personal wealth. And unlike hedge fund peers such as Ray Dalio and Ken Griffin, he doesn't appear on billionaire lists from Bloomberg or Forbes. But some details on his net worth will emerge later as he's required to divest certain holdings to avoid any conflicts of interest while Treasury chief.
Key Square didn't immediately respond to a request for comment in his wealth or assets to be divested.
For now, a look at Bessent's winning bets while working in finance offer some insight into how me made his fortune.
The South Carolina native and Yale graduate started off as a securities analyst and options trader at a Saudi family's investment arm, according to the Wall Street Journal. He later interned with Jim Rogers, worked for short-seller James Chanos, and then joined Soros Fund Management in 1991.
That's when Bessent made one of his most famous wagers. While at the firm's London office, he helped engineer a short against the British pound in 1992, netting Soros a profit of more than $1 billion. In the U.K., the trade is infamous and led to "Black Wednesday," when the pound was de-linked from European currencies.
After working for Soros, he became a senior partner at Protege Partners and then started his own firm but had to return clients' funds in 2005, the Journal reported.
In 2011, he returned to Soros and served as chief investment officer for the hedge fund turned family office. During his second stint, he made about $10 billion in profit for Soros, according to Bloomberg. Among his big bets was a short against Japan's yen that produced a $1 billion windfall in 2013.
He left in 2015 to launch Key Square, which makes bets on global macroeconomic trends, and raised $4.5 billion, including $2 billion from Soros. Key's main fund saw returns surge 13% in 2016 after Bessent bet again on the British pound falling, this time after the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, sources told Reuters.
Bessent scored another win later in 2016 by correctly anticipated a U.S. stock and dollar rally following Trump's first presidential election victory. Returns were mixed from 2017 to 2022 but notched double-digit gains in 2023 and 2024, according to Reuters.
This year, like in 2016, Key Square bet that U.S. stocks and the dollar would jump after a Trump victory, contributing to the firm's big 2024 profit, the report said. Despite the recent returns, Key Square has seen assets under management decline to $577 million as of December 2023 from a peak of $5.1 billion at the end of 2017, the report said.
Under a prior agreement to return his money, Soros took back most of his capital from Key Square in 2018 and he no longer has any money managed by Bessent, sources told Reuters.
Key Square didn't immediately comment on the Reuters story.
Bessent's experience in finance helped him earn positive reactions from Wall Street after he was nominated to lead the Treasury Department. But more importantly for Bessent, his experience helped him secure the president-elect's confidence.
"Scott is widely respected as one of the World’s foremost International Investors and Geopolitical and Economic Strategists," Trump said in a statement posted on social media Friday. "Scott’s story is that of the American Dream."
