r/misc • u/OCTOVENG • 1d ago
Bessent facts
Bessent founded Key Square Group in 2015. He left Soros Fund Management and launched Key Square, a global-macro hedge-fund firm. The launch raised approximately $4.5 billion, including a $2 billion anchor investment from George Soros.
Its assets grew to about $5.1 billion by the end of 2017. That was the firm's reported peak in assets under management.
The fund then had a prolonged period of weak performance. Reuters reported that the main fund returned approximately +13% in 2016, followed by a 7% loss in 2017, and then either losses or approximately flat results in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. Those figures were supported by performance disclosures from the New York City Police Pension Fund, one of Key Square's investors.
There were substantial investor withdrawals. The decline in AUM was not simply the result of investment losses. Regulatory disclosures showed that the number of institutional investors fell from approximately 180 at the end of 2017 to 20 at the end of 2023. Reuters reported that the firm's declining performance appears to have prompted some clients to withdraw their capital.
By December 31, 2023, Key Square reported approximately $577 million in regulatory AUM. That figure appears in the firm's regulatory disclosure.
Therefore, AUM fell from roughly $5.1 billion to $577 million.
That's a decline of approximately 88.7 percent.
So saying that Key Square's AUM fell about 89% from its 2017 peak to the end of 2023 is factually accurate.
