Pointless “educational” provocation feeds sour buzz around hedge fund gadfly’s headline appearances right when he needs a career pivot to stick.
Anthony Scaramucci’s long-awaited media outlet wasn’t even 3 weeks past formal launch before a Twitter poll questioning the magnitude of the Holocaust went viral.
Maybe they innocently thought it was a topic worth exploring. If so, it’s possible that they were also unaware that it’s a classic denial talking point popular with anti-Semites and worse.
Whatever the motive, the stunt makes Scaramucci a more divisive figure than ever in the asset management industry that still hasn’t digested his flirtation with Trump-era politics.
And while he’s in professional limbo waiting for regulatory clearance to sell his firm Skybridge Capital, that friction is making it hot for him on the speaking circuit.
He’s got another trade show scheduled tomorrow morning in Denver. While the sponsors aren’t likely to cut him from the agenda at this late date, the timing doesn’t exactly send the right signal.
Right now Scaramucci’s messaging is just too confused to give event sponsors perfect confidence that he’ll bring high-ticket crowds together instead of make them angry.
That’s a problem.
Already a controversial choice
When the organizers of Financial Advisor magazine’s Inside Alternatives conference picked Scaramucci as their keynote speaker back in August, he was still a relatively classic choice.
After all, he had just been forced out of the White House communications office and gotten served with divorce papers after missing the birth of a child in order to accompany the president to that Boy Scout jamboree.
He undoubtedly had insight and probably funny stories to share, which is exactly how the event situated him at the time: a light, maybe inspirational lunchtime chat from a celebrity.
If not for the unorthodox White House stint, he could just as easily have been a retired spots star, a centrist pundit, some TV commentator or other “harmless” industry outsider.
But the lines were already blurred. Scaramucci may have dabbled in public life, but the nominal point of interest here was still his career as a high-profile hedge fund impresario. That’s what qualified his talk for continuing education credit where a George Will or Derek Jeter wouldn’t rate.
And even then, the blurred line raised eyebrows among potential attendees wondering why the event would cater to “a man who even the most shameful anti-democratic administration in my lifetime could not abide for even two weeks.”
It was a fairly gutsy call. But that was before this erratic poll stunt.
Scaramucci acknowledges that asking how many Jews died in the Holocaust is begging a question that most reasonable people today don’t need answered.
At best, it’s like running a poll to find out how much of your audience will say the sky is green or the earth is flat.
It turns out barely 20% of Scaramucci’s audience would admit that the Nazis killed more than 5 million Jews. Either his audience is deliberately denying the truth or ignorant of it.
Someone in Scaramucci’s organization thought it was a good idea. I don’t think it was him or his partner, who lost family in the concentration camps, so what was the point? How does a guy who worked his way to the top of the industry spin a move that a few brain cells somewhere in the system would have reconsidered?
Maybe that’s what he’ll talk about at the conference tomorrow. For now, the sponsors don’t seem to mind. He’s still on the guest list as I write this and the show’s going to go on.
If the sponsors have no complaints, I guess it’s their calculated decision. Rumor has it a few advisors have tried to cancel their registration in protest, but again, it’s late in the game to protest or change the agenda.
We’ll see if he gets invited back next year. For all I know the sizzle will outweigh the shock and he’ll be the most wildly successful keynote speaker in industry history.
A vulnerable stage
There are hints that other industry event planners aren’t so forgiving. Scaramucci cancelled an appearance at Neuberger Berman with only a few weeks’ notice. Accounts vary on why.
Whether the $270 billion asset manager got cold feet or the scheduling suddenly fell through, we wouldn’t be asking if he weren’t waiting out an unexpectedly long career transition.
He’s only 53 and his family life has disintegrated. The White House role he engineered for himself evaporated. And since he quit the hedge fund months before, if I were him I’d be getting really bored about now.
Boredom can be dangerous. It may be a factor in the way his new media venture has rolled out before there’s a coherent plan in place — he wants to stay busy and relevant, but has no structure for making that happen.
Cash to fund a robust start-up operation could be tight. We were all expecting the regulators to clear the sale of Scaramucci’s hedge fund to a Chinese investment group months ago.
But in the absence of any announcement or SEC filing, it looks like the deal is still in limbo. Normally the timeline runs out after 75 days.
This year, the relevant offices are reportedly understaffed and politically inclined to block sales of strategic U.S. assets to foreign entities.
I can’t find any obvious road block in the firm’s public holdings, but then again, the fund of funds style means those holdings are other hedge funds, with portfolios that are rarely transparent or simple.
These regulators normally look at technology with irreplaceable security applications, rare materials we don’t want to source to hostile countries and other clear calls. Digging into dozens of hedge funds, each with its own complex set of positions, isn’t in their wheelhouse.
When they finally run all the numbers, the odds of the deal going through actually look pretty good. But for now, it’s all going slowly.
Until the deal gets the green light to close, Scaramucci can’t get his millions out of the firm. He’s living on stockpiled personal wealth with a divorce complicating the math.
In the meantime, he’s happy to hit the speaking circuit, make a little money and keep his profile elevated. He’s also eager to get this media venture moving, but it’s hard to say how many resources he can really throw at it right now.
If he’s going for a self-financed Breitbart clone, he’s doing it on the ultra-lean side. As far as I can tell, right now the venture is just that Twitter account throwing content at the wall to see what sticks and what stinks.
Those of you with retired workaholic clients climbing the walls can read the signs. He’s rushing into things, letting his people fail in public before there’s a plan.
Whether he turned a blind eye to white supremacist messaging or someone on the team simply screwed up, the risk of backlash isn’t trivial.
He might have kept the speaking engagements he has now. His sponsors may not mind. But why roll the dice unnecessarily? He can play it cool. Whether he’s constitutionally able to do it or not remains to be seen.
