You may not be aware of the wild news that has come out of the UK recently, but it’s actually important.
I’ll get to the good things about Sunak in a moment, but first a few words about the bond between America and Britain. France and Israel might think they have a special relationship with the United States, but they are competing for second place. We have forged ties with England, who returned to the ill-fated colony of Virginia in 1584.
Winston Churchill described US-British relations as “special” in a 1946 speech to President Harry Truman in Fulton, Missouri. Sure, there are some differences. Cold and hot beer, color and color, football and football. But we have much more in common. The United States and Britain share a love of the British royal family and an amazing cross-cultural mashup when it comes to rock music, fashion and television.
Economic ties between the world’s 1st and 6th largest economies after India, Germany, Japan and China also play an important role. According to the website of the US Embassy in the UK, the US and UK are each other’s largest sources of foreign direct investment.
British Harvard MBA and Wall Street investor Ann Berry says there’s more to it than that. In light of tensions with Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, the United States needs allies, she said.
“Historical alliances are becoming increasingly important in the modern world, as global allegiances become less transparent, more ephemeral, and more transactional.” She said she is a friend to us. And I’m still an interpreter on this side of the Atlantic when it comes to figuring out how to play in Europe. “
Britain faces serious economic problems. Partly due to a universal supply and demand imbalance, partly due to UK-specific circumstances, some due to Brexit and her Brexit, which occurred almost two years ago. doing. As a result, multinationals moved their European headquarters out of London, creating labor shortages and trade frictions. A strong dollar and high energy prices are causing more pain.
This troubled economy has fallen into the lap of Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak (pronounced REE-she SUE-nack), the Tory leader who has been in power for 12 years. He is the successor to Liz Truss, whose volatile tenure as UK prime minister ended after just six weeks amid extreme market volatility.
Sunak’s financial expertise should prove invaluable in this new role and the market is already stable.In addition to ties to the financial world, the new prime minister has deep ties to the U.S.
The new prime minister is the first of many. At 42, he is the youngest prime minister since William Pitt (The Younger), who took office in 1783 at the age of 24. Born in England, Sunak is the first Prime Minister of Indian descent. He was also the first former hedge fund executive, the first to earn his MBA from Stanford University, and the first to work for Goldman Sachs.
Let’s take a closer look at some of these American connections. After graduating from Oxford in 2001, Rishi joined Goldman in London as an analyst, where she sat next to the aforementioned Anne Herbert.
“He was very smart, analytical, very articulate, and a really fun character,” she says. I was very focused on making sure.”
Sunak left Goldman for a Fulbright Scholarship to Stanford University, where he earned an MBA in 2006. Not literally) “Going for Broke” was written by 76-year-old billionaire businessman and Tory politician Michael His Lord Ashcroft. Ashcroft writes that the Silicon Valley fascinated his Sunak and Bay how a 10 minute drive through the area can drive you past hundreds of companies that have changed people’s lives. I am writing that I have spoken about
The book tells the rigor of Stanford, and one of his classmates, Maria Angiano, tells the author: He was always so positive. Another student, Rashad Bartholomew, who was there at the time, remembered a serious party, but said that Sunak didn’t drink, but that he played low-stakes poker.
After graduating from Stanford University Business School, Sunak worked at a hedge fund in London. Among them was The Children’s Investment Fund (commonly known as TCI), run by British billionaire Chris Hohn. Hedge fund manager. Horn once made activist investments that included targeting American railroad CSX, which traces its roots to America’s oldest Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (or B&O). The stake in CSX became a tangled affair, with disastrous consequences for TCI. Sunak worked on his CSX investment and his role was mentioned in the lawsuit.
Snak is very wealthy, owing most of it to his wife Akshata Murthy, a Claremont McKenna graduate whom he met at Stanford University, and the daughter of Infosys billionaire founder Narayana Murthy. . According to Indian magazine Business Today, Akshata owns 0.93% of her Infosys, which is worth about $700 million. Infosys’ main business was to outsource thousands of US jobs to India or replace US jobs with foreigners. We’ve also had repeated headaches with US regulators.
But wait. There is even more Americana via Murthys. Through Akshata and her family’s business, Snack also has ties to the company that operates Wendy’s in India, as well as a company that operates a joint venture with Amazon in India, according to The Guardian’s investigation.
Finally, according to the BBC, Sunak had a U.S. green card at one point.He still has a luxury mansion in Santa Monica, reports The Guardian.
My point is that Sunak’s connection with America is as important and idiosyncratic as Britain itself, and indeed reflects the changing nature of our relationship with Britain.
Think of it this way: In the 19th century, our ties were mostly commercial, and Scottish-born American steel baron Andrew Carnegie was known for his philanthropic work in America and the British Empire. I was. In the 20th century, the military alliance with Great Britain was paramount, and the symbol of that unity was Winston Churchill, much loved (and to some extent rewarded) by Americans. And now, in the 21st century, Sunak, a former Wall Street man with an American MBA, has a better financial edge than Sunak, making him the latest representative of Anglo-Americanism.
Rishi Sunak: As British/American as steak and kidney and apple pie.
This article was featured in the Saturday edition of Morning Brief on October 29. Your morning brief will be sent directly to your inbox by 6:30 AM ET every Monday through Friday. apply
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