Little is known about Bessent’s personal wealth. And unlike hedge fund peers like Ray Dalio and Ken Griffin, he doesn’t appear on the billionaires’ lists. Bloomberg or Forbes. But some details of his estate will emerge later, as he has to divest some of his holdings to avoid a conflict of interest.
Key Square did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its wealth or assets.
For now, a look at Bessent’s winning bets while working in finance gives an idea of how I made his fortune.
Born in South Carolina and graduate of Yale, he started out as a securities analyst and options trader in the investment arm of a Saudi family. 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.
It was then that Bessent made one of his most famous bets. While at the firm’s London office, he helped make a short against the British pound in 1992, netting Soros more than $1 billion in profits. In the UK, trade is vicious and led to “Black Wednesday”, when the pound was removed from European currencies.
After working for Soros, he became a senior partner at Protege Partners and later founded his own firm, but had to return client funds in 2005. The magazine notify
In 2011, he returned to Soros and served as an investment manager at the family office-turned-hedge fund. In his second season, he earned about $10 billion for Soros, According to Bloomberg. Among his big bets was a short against the Japanese yen that won him $1 billion in 2013.
He left in 2015 to launch Key Square, which bets on global macroeconomic trends, and raised $4.5 billion, including $2 billion from Soros. Key’s flagship fund increased returns by 13% in 2016 after Bessent again bet on a fall in the British pound, this time following the Brexit vote to leave the European Union. sources told Reuters.
Bessent scored another victory in 2016 by correctly predicting the rally in US stocks and the dollar following Trump’s first presidential election win. Returns were mixed from 2017 to 2022, but saw double-digit gains in 2023 and 2024, according to Reuters.
This year, as in 2016, Key Square bet that US stocks and the dollar would jump after Trump’s victory, contributing to the firm’s big 2024 profit, the report said. Despite the recent returns, Key Square saw assets under management fall to $577 million in December 2023 from a peak of $5.1 billion at the end of 2017, the report said.
Under a preliminary agreement to return his money, Soros returned most of his capital from Key Square in 2018 and no longer has any money managed by Bessent, sources told Reuters.
Key Square did not immediately comment on the Reuters story.
Bessent’s financial expertise helped him win Positive reactions on Wall Street After being appointed to lead the Department of Finance. But more importantly for Bessent, his experience helped him gain the president-elect’s trust.
“Scott is highly respected as one of the world’s leading international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists,” Trump said in a statement posted on social media Friday. “Scott’s story is one of the American Dream.”
