Scott Bessent, the founder of Key Square Capital Management, was appointed Treasury secretary late Friday by President-elect Donald Trump, bringing a long track record of success since his days at Wall Street hedge funds.
Little has been reported about Bessent’s personal wealth. And unlike fellow hedge funds like Ray Dalio and Ken Griffin, he doesn’t appear on Bloomberg or Forbes. But some details about his net worth will emerge later, as as head of the Treasury he must divest certain interests to avoid conflicts of interest.
Key Square did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its wealth or assets that would be divested.
For now, a look at Bessent’s winning bets while working in finance offers some insight into how I made his fortune.
The South Carolina native and Yale graduate started as a securities analyst and options trader in the investment arm of a Saudi family, according to the newspaper. Wall Street Journal. He later interned for 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 working in the company’s London office, he helped create a short position on the British pound in 1992, netting Soros a profit of more than $1 billion. In Britain the trade is infamous and led to ‘Black Wednesday’, when the pound was de-pegged from the European currency.
After working for Soros, he became a senior partner at Protege Partners and then started his own firm, but had to pay back his clients’ money in 2005. Magazine reported.
In 2011, he returned to Soros and served as Chief Investment Officer for the hedge fund-turned-family office. According to Bloomberg, he made about $10 billion in profits for Soros during his second stint. One of his big bets was a short position on the Japanese yen, which yielded a $1 billion windfall 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 saw returns rise 13% in 2016 after Bessent again bet on a decline in the British pound, this time after the Brexit referendum to leave the European Union, sources told Reuters.
Bessent scored another victory later in 2016 by correctly anticipating a rally in US stocks and dollars after Trump’s first victory in the presidential election. Returns were mixed between 2017 and 2022, but posted double-digit gains in 2023 and 2024, according to Reuters.
This year, as in 2016, Key Square bet that U.S. stocks and the dollar would rise after a Trump victory, contributing to the company’s big gains in 2024, the report said. Despite recent returns, Key Square has seen assets under management decline to $577 million as of December 2023, down from a peak of $5.1 billion at the end of 2017, the report said.
