Hedge Funds White House Meeting
Hedge Fund Execs Meeting with White House on Fiscal Cliff
Today White House is welcoming a group that it has held a chilly relationship with for the last four years: hedge fund managers. There has to be some level of awkwardness and certainly tension given the recent history between this administration and hedge funds; hedge funds were among some of the biggest contributors to the President's 2008 campaign and they largely reversed in the 2012 race, favoring Republicans. Some of this shift stems from comments by the President that were critical of the financial industry (think: "fat cat" bankers) and his Administration's increased regulation and push to raise taxes on the wealthy and potentially carried interest.Now, as the President and his staff are negotiating with Republicans on the fiscal cliff, representatives from the hedge fund industry, such as Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management, are meeting with Valerie Jarrett, the President's senior advisor, as part of the President's ongoing efforts to reach out the financial and business community. We'll have to wait and see whether this is a step toward repairing this tense relationship.
The Obama administration is continuing its outreach to Wall Street executives in pressing for a resolution of the U.S. budget dispute, with a meeting planned today between Valerie Jarrett and hedge fund managers, according to an administration official.
Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, will meet with financial services executives, including Daniel Och, chief executive of Och-Ziff Capital Management, according to the official, who requested anonymity when discussing private meetings.
Others scheduled to attend, the official said, include Stefan M. Selig, executive vice chairman of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch; Jonathan D. Gray, global head of real estate at Blackstone Group Management LLC; and Jes Staley, chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s corporate and investment bank.
Today’s Wall Street session with Jarrett, reported earlier by the New York Times, follows her meeting on Dec. 3 with Marc Lasry, managing partner and founder of Avenue Capital Group LLC, and Gary D. Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Two days later, Obama also addressed the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers, and repeated his argument that more tax revenue needs to come from the top 2 percent of earners while rates for middle-income Americans stay the same. Source
