the billionaire The co-founder of Susquehanna International Group (SIG), which has a $21 billion stake in TikTok, has placed his bets on the winner of this year’s presidential election.
Jeff Yass, a skilled poker player with a keen sense for turning big profits on his investments, is currently the richest man in Pennsylvania with a personal fortune of $47 billion.
Yass has given away some of his fortune to various organizations and has become one of the biggest backers of the anti-tax political advocacy group Club for Growth.
The billionaire is rumored to be being considered for a possible position in the presidential cabinet, if his predicted winner emerges victorious: Donald Trump.
His political fortunes may not come as a surprise to those who know Yass, but his support for Trump surprises those familiar with the views the businessman once held about the presidential candidate.
Jeff Yass, entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Susquehanna International Group (SIG), supports Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
The support is surprising after his statements against Trump during an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2022.
‘He doesn’t have any donor. He doesn’t need the money. He gets a lot of free publicity,” Yass told the Wall Street Journal in 2022.
‘It’s not like you can influence him at all. The only thing you can appeal to is: “You are going to lose and you will be humiliated.”
A native of New York, Yass wrote his thesis on the ethics of options trading while attending SUNY Binghamton.
He studied economics and mathematics while having fun playing poker and backgammon.
During that time, he and his college friends Steve Bloom, Eric Brooks, Andrew Frost and Joel Greenberg created SIG, which has since grown into an empire of technology companies valued at nearly $67 billion as of the end of March. .
SIG also invested in 2012 and now owns a 15 percent stake in TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance.
Yass wrote his thesis on the ethics of options trading while attending SUNY Binghamton. She attended New York University for graduate studies, but did not graduate.
SIG invested in TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, in 2012. Trump favored banning TikTok until March 2024 after meeting with Yass.
Yass and Trump’s growing affiliation had a chance to come to an end because the president-elect supported the ban of TikTok in the United States.
However, that quickly changed last March after shares of Digital World Acquisition Corporation rose 30 percent.
Digital World Acquisition Corporation merged with the former president’s Media & Technology Group earlier that month, a big part of that was due to Yass.
The stock surge helped boost Trump’s net worth to $6.5 billion and put him on Bloomberg’s list of the 500 richest people for the first time.
Just after Trump’s historic financial successes, he reversed his position on banning TikTok, arguing that it would empower Facebook, which he claimed was the “enemy of the people.”
Yass is currently a leading contender to be named Trump’s Treasury secretary if he wins the 2024 election.
Yass, who has been a registered libertarian since 1996, has political views that are not without controversy.
The businessman has spent millions of dollars funding politicians who focus on minimizing government involvement in areas such as taxes, trade, education and gaming.
Trump is one of those politicians, and the donation even led to Yass not receiving an invitation to the annual economic retreat hosted by the Club for Growth in 2023 because the group rejected the former president.
However, Trump claimed that he and the Club for Growth are “in love again” and his meeting with Yass at one of the group’s retreats took place just before his change of position on the TikTok ban.
Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung maintains that “there have been no discussions about who will serve in a second Trump administration.”