The ‘King of Mayfair’ and the Sheikh

A Trump Middle East extravaganza to start: Donald Trump’s trip to the Gulf has been filled with blandishments, opulence and petrodollar-fuelled megadeals, the FT reports.

In today’s newsletter:

Mayfair magnate trims empire

London’s Mayfair has played host to some larger-than-life characters over the centuries.

A favourite haunt of Winston Churchill and Oscar Wilde, the district is now dominated by Middle Eastern billionaires, high-powered financiers and the political establishment.

This mix of old and new money rub shoulders with one another in private members’ clubs and exclusive restaurants. Now, Richard Caring, the man behind institutions such as Annabel’s, is preparing to sell off a big chunk of his empire.

Caring is in advanced talks to sell a significant portion of his businesses to a holding company controlled by Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

With his characteristic locks and a bright-white smile, Caring has a portfolio of high-end properties and restaurants that have earned him the moniker “King of Mayfair”. 

His array of hot businesses puts him in the throes of high-profile company. He’s been photographed alongside the likes of Michael Caine, Kate Moss and Bill Clinton. 

His portfolio encompasses many of Mayfair’s most vaunted establishments, including private members’ club Annabel’s, where the waiting list runs into the thousands and patrons are watched over by Picassos and Chagalls.

The sale is a big moment for Caring, who channelled the money he’d made selling clothes to high street retailers into a portfolio of hospitality brands.

Yet he’s probably best known for The Ivy. Once a single restaurant frequented by celebrities, he turned it into a chain of more than 40 luxury eateries in the UK and Ireland.

A sale would hand the 76-year-old cash with which to expand his empire beyond the UK. The deal could exceed £1bn, according to DD’s Ivan Levingston, Arash Massoudi and Robert Smith, and the FT’s Chloe Cornish.

It’s anchored around Caring’s plans to sell a stake in the company that owns the Ivy Collection of restaurants, but other assets could be included.

It’s also a sign of the enduring appeal of London’s most exclusive postcodes to overseas buyers. Earlier this year, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund bought a £306mn stake in the Duke of Westminster’s historic Mayfair estate.

Even in a deglobalising world, big money is willing to bet that the ultra-wealthy will convene in and around Mayfair.

The ‘bonfire of the American era’

Subtlety has never been one of Elliott Management’s defining traits.

So it was no surprise that when the activist firm decided to sound the alarm over Donald Trump’s trade war, it did so rather bluntly.

Late last month, Elliott wrote a letter to investors, with one section warning that the unpredictability of the president’s tariff policy could scare investors away from the US.

The title of the section: “Bonfire of the American era?”

It appears to be a nod to Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, a book that captured 1980s New York with its tale of the bond trader Sherman McCoy and his ultimate downfall.

Elliott warned that the Trump administration’s economic programme could diminish the appeal of the dollar and doing business in the US.

The result, wrote Elliott, could be “capital flight” and a “significant” fall in value of the dollar and US assets.

The letter, scooped by the FT’s Costas Mourselas, was sent to investors after Trump’s 90-day pause on “reciprocal” tariffs. It said the levies were “likely more stringent than the ones that exacerbated the Great Depression in the 1930s”.

“Such tariffs will generate a lengthy, complicated process of negotiation, retaliation and uncertainty for businesses around the globe” that could cause “enormous” damage, Elliott added.

It’s especially poignant given that Elliott founder and co-chief executive Paul Singer has been a prolific Republican donor over the past few years.

In the most recent election cycle, he donated $56mn to the party’s candidates, according to OpenSecrets.

The letter puts Elliott in a small group of financial heavyweights sounding the alarm over Trump’s trade war.

Citadel founder Ken Griffin, another big Republican donor, said last year that the tariff plan would put the US “on a slippery slope to crony capitalism”.

And Bill Ackman, a vocal Trump supporter, previously described the tariffs as “a major policy error”.

The White House has walked back on tariffs since then (“brilliantly executed”, said Ackman in early April). But some Wall Street titans still foresee clouds ahead.

JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon cautioned on Thursday that a recession was still on the cards, even after the US and China reached a tentative détente.

“Hopefully we’ll avoid it, but I wouldn’t take it off the table at this point,” he said.

Davos without the original ‘Davos Man’

Can Davos disentangle itself from its founder?

That’s the question on the minds of grandees at the World Economic Forum as it grapples with allegations about the conduct of Klaus Schwab, who founded the group in 1971.

Schwab had hoped for a slow transition away from his role at the helm of the WEF when he announced last month that he planned to “start the process of stepping down”.

That notion was swiftly put to bed. At the end of April, he was forced out as the WEF’s chair. The board of trustees ordered its second probe into his conduct in less than a year.

It’s a stunning fall from grace for a man who relished running Davos, the annual winter meeting for bigwigs in politics, business and finance.

The latest claims against Schwab came from an anonymous whistleblower who accused him and his family of receiving inappropriate financial benefits from the WEF.

The whistleblower also said Schwab had manipulated the WEF’s flagship “global competitiveness report” to curry favour with governments.

Schwab has vehemently denied all the accusations.

In a counterattack, he said the WEF underpaid him for decades, benefited from unpaid work by his wife and enjoyed the reflected glory of their personal philanthropic donations.

This all presents questions over the WEF’s pulling power without Schwab, who was able to attract the world’s top political and business leaders.

The allegations have also alarmed the corporate chieftains who fund the annual meeting in Davos.

“The place is all panicking about how much they will be tarnished by [the claims],” one senior employee told the FT’s Stephen Foley and Mercedes Ruehl. “That is the biggest worry at the moment. Does it die with him or stick to WEF?”

Job moves

• Tikehau Capital has named Xavier Musca as the chair of its supervisory board. Musca was most recently chief executive of Crédit Agricole CIB and succeeds Christian de Labriffe, who will take on a new role as special adviser.

• Astorg co-founder Thierry Timsit has stepped down from his role as chief executive. He will become executive chair and is replaced by Benjamin Cordonnier, who will lead the firm as co-managing partner together with Judith Charpentier.

• Simpson Thacher has appointed Daniel Margulies as a partner in the firm’s Hong Kong office. He will focus on restructuring and special situations, and joins from Dechert, where he was a partner.

Smart reads

Buying access Qatar has spent billions of dollars on the US military and universities, The Wall Street Journal reports. That money’s starting to pay off in the form of influence.

Tech race Silicon Valley moguls used to see China as a production hub, the FT writes. Now some are buying slices of its tech future.

Epic rivalry The billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen paid a handsome sum to poach Juan Soto from the Yankees for the Mets, The New Yorker writes. Has the long-standing rivalry changed for good? 

News round-up

US poised to dial back bank rules imposed in wake of 2008 crisis (FT)

EY delays start dates for consulting recruits for third year in a row (FT)

Walmart to raise prices despite US-China trade deal (FT)

US crypto group Coinbase targeted by hackers (FT)

Donald Trump lashes out at Apple over plan to ship US iPhones from India (FT)

UnitedHealth Group is under criminal investigation for possible Medicare fraud (WSJ)

Stellantis and Renault bosses call for EU focus on fewer rules and more strategy (FT)

Qatar’s wealth fund plans $500bn US push over next decade (Bloomberg)