- Scott Bessent, who is President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Treasury Department, filed a personal financial disclosure that lists assets worth at least $521 million. The hedge fund chief also said he would resign from Key Square and sell his stake, if he's confirmed.
Hedge fund chief Scott Bessent, who is President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Treasury Department, disclosed assets worth at least $521 million, though the actual amount is likely much higher.
In a filing made public Saturday by the US Office of Government Ethics, the list of assets for the founder of Key Square Capital Management didn't have exact values. Instead, each one has a range of values, sometimes with a wide spread, or simply "over $50,000,000."
For example, he listed residential real estate in the Bahamas worth $5 million-$25 million that provides rental income of $50,001-$100,000.
He also listed a home in Cashiers, N.C., worth $5 million-$25 million as well as art and antiques worth $1 million-$5 million.
Meanwhile, even though he made a name for himself on Wall Street with massive wins on currency trades and started Key Square to bet on global macroeconomic trends, he appears to be a believer in passive investing too.
Bessent has more than $50 million each in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF, and the Invesco QQQ, which tracks the Nasdaq 100.
He also has more than $50 million in U.S. Treasury bills as well as positions of similar size in the dollar versus the euro, China's yuan, and Japan's yen. As for crypto, Bessent listed the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF worth $250,001-$500,000.
To avoid conflicts of interest, he vowed to resign from Key Square and sell his share of the partnership, if confirmed by the Senate to be Treasury secretary.
Most of his income comes from Key Square, including a guaranteed payment of $1 million and "management fees/incentive allocations; dividends" of $2.8 million.
