Grand Possibility of New Beginnings

These days, the economy feels dire for a lot of reasons. There are simply a lot of risks on the horizon. Europe is in the center of an energy crisis, geopolitical tumult brews under the surface and many investors are torn on the path ahead.

Yet there are top executives across Wall Street who are making some of the biggest changes of their careers during what some investors fear is already a recession.

Jay Sammons left a high-level post at Carlyle this year to start a new private investment firm. He’s doing so alongside Kim Kardashian, a reality television star who has been a personal and professional contact for Carlyle’s former global head of consumer, media and retail for the past six years. Kardashian herself has started multiple multibillion-dollar businesses, and her mother, Kris Jenner, will also be a partner at the firm -- SKKY Partners.

“I had a great nearly 17 years at Carlyle, and I have tremendous respect for the firm and for the people that I worked with,” Sammons told me in a telephone interview. “So yes, it is always hard to walk away from such a terrific firm and position. But at the same time, I’m incredibly optimistic about what Kim, Kris and I can build in the future.”

When asked whether he was comfortable starting a new firm during a market downturn, he said: “The types of businesses we will be investing in, while we need to understand the economic environment that they operate in, will succeed in good times and bad because they’re high-quality businesses seeking to take market share through great execution.”

Over at Goldman, the co-heads of the firm’s asset manager announced that Katie Koch would be leaving. The chief investment officer of the bank’s public equity business had $300 billion under her purview. She’s joining $220 billion firm TCW as the bond giant’s next chief executive officer -- one of the rare women to run an asset manager of this size, at the mere age of 42.

She joins that firm at a transitional time, after David Lippman has previously said he’d be stepping down and longtime fixed income investor Tad Rivelle has left the firm. TCW’s chief technology officer and chief operating officer have also started with the firm just last year, after working at Schwab and Pimco.

All of this goes to show: There is a grand possibility of new beginnings, even during tough times.

This all doesn’t negate that there are anxieties brewing elsewhere when it comes to the Wall Street job market. Given the drop-off in activity, Lincoln International CEO Rob Brown spoke to the reality of potential layoffs across the industry. You can read his comments here for the Bloomberg Deals newsletter -- and sign up to keep reading! I plan to keep contributing.

Scaramucci’s Next Moves

There was a time when Anthony Scaramucci had a stint at the White House and sought to sell a SkyBridge stake years ago. It was a deal that was widely anticipated and ended up being scrapped. But that was a different time, and different reason for transacting.

Now, in an early Friday announcement that almost nobody expected, SkyBridge said it’s selling a 30% stake to FTX Ventures, a unit of the cryptocurrency exchange run by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.

“I’m thinking about the next decade of SkyBridge, I’m going to be 60 in January of 2024,” Scaramucci said in a Zoom conversation. “Will I keep working? I could tell you that I’m Hank Greenberg."

However, "I don’t want to be a Shakespearean figure, where I’m overly clinging to the firm.”

His goal is to get SkyBridge closer to nearly doubling assets to $5 billion in the next two years, and past $10 billion within seven years.

FTX plans to work “closely with SkyBridge on its crypto investment activity and also working alongside them on promising non-crypto-related investments,” Bankman-Fried said in a statement.

The two firms have been expanding their relationships over the past two years, as the crypto billionaire’s company agreed to a multiyear partnership that included FTX serving as a presenting sponsor to Scaramucci’s SALT events in North America, Asia and the Middle East. The Crypto Bahamas event last year drew more than 2,000 people.

What's more is that SkyBridge has invested in multiple series of FTX private shares. One of its smaller funds that had exposure to the crypto industry -- including FTX -- had paused withdrawals earlier this year. SkyBridge’s larger hedge fund of funds invested in the FTX private placements, according to a regulatory filing.

Speaking of SALT, I’ll be interviewing Bridgewater’s Greg Jensen at 3:20 pm Eastern on Monday as investors and crypto executives rain down on New York’s Javits Center. There’s also the SuperReturn event in New York, where I’ll be interviewing Apollo’s David Sambur on Wednesday morning. I hope you’ll join and tune in to Bloomberg Television -- where we’ll recap many of these discussions and push forward with guests including Ilana Weinstein, CAIS CEO Matt Brown and Partners Group CEO David Layton.

More to come. Tips and opinions welcome at [email protected]. Hoping you have a great weekend -- I'll be resting up before an extraordinarily busy week ahead,

Sonali