Jeff Yass, the ultra-rich and ultra-right American super-donor

Published on: 03/27/2024 – 6:50 p.m

6 minutes

A year ago, a group of Pennsylvania NGOs issued a warning on the Pennsylvania Capital-Star news site: Jeff Yass is coming onto the national scene, and he’s a problem for democracy. They wanted to warn against the way this local multi-billionaire was using his vast wealth, estimated at 27 to 40 billion dollars – or between 25 and 37 billion euros – to try to influence policies that served his interests.

A year later, the first part of his prediction came true. Jeff Yass’s name appears more and more in the media, often on the chest of former President Donald Trump. But only. As to whether it threatens democracy, the jury is still out.

Fan of TikTok and Truth Social

This billionaire has, in any case, contributed to an unlikely reversal in the fortunes of Donald Trump, who is nearly five billion dollars richer since the IPO of his social network Truth Social on Tuesday, March 26. Jeff Yass was actually the largest institutional investor in Digital World Acquisition Corp., the financial vehicle that merged with Truth Social, allowing the social network to be listed on the stock exchange. His investment fund, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), owns about $22 million in shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp. In December 2023.

A bet that drove up the company’s value before its marriage to Truth Social. SIG denies investing with political meaning, insisting the fund only seeks to “profit from the market”. But for Donald Trump, who has complained in recent weeks about having trouble getting money to pay his fines in two legal cases, Truth Social’s stock market success is a big financial boost. They own about 60% of the social network, valued at over $8 billion.

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Jeff Yass also seems to be involved in another surprise of the chef “made into Donald Trump”: the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election opposed the law aimed at banning TikTok in the United States on March 11. The same Donald Trump in 2020, when he was president, unsuccessfully tried to push the Chinese-origin social network out of the country.

This 180-degree turn has puzzled political commentators. Did Donald Trump want to take revenge on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is suspected of enmity with the former president and who has everything to gain by seeing one of his rivals banned from the United States? Another element quickly emerged: Donald Trump met Jeff Yass a few weeks before his face-off during a meeting organized by the Club for Growth, one of the most influential American conservative organizations. Explanation: Susquehanna International Group is one of the largest American investors in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

Jeff Yass was also the first American with his investment fund to bet on the Chinese group in 2012. At that time, TikTok did not exist yet. Today, SIG owns 15% of ByteDance and Jeff Yass personally owns about 7%. A law banning TikTok in the United States, where about 150 million people use it, is likely to cost Jeff Yass billions, the Wall Street Journal confirms.

A man who whispers in the ears of racehorses

Donald Trump denied that he raised the issue of Tiktok during an interview with Jeff Yass. The Pennsylvania multi-billionaire, however, has a certain tendency to take advantage of his financial largess as politicians who openly oppose the ban on TikTok, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal.

This nationwide activism — making him the biggest donor to the 2024 presidential election, according to Reuters calculations — is a reminder of what he has already done in Pennsylvania.

In this northeastern state, he was accused of using his wealth to prevent the election of politicians believed to be in favor of higher local taxes. “For years, we’ve seen Jeff Yass take advantage of Pennsylvania’s very lax political financing laws to favor his favorite politicians,” lamented a group of NGOs decrying the “Yass menace” in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. .

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At age 68, Jeff Yass made his fortune in Pennsylvania, the state where Joe Biden is also from. He started with horses in the 1980s. Together with friends, they developed an algorithm to optimize bets. Thus he managed to win more than $700,000 in one go, “the largest profit in the history of horse racing in the United States”, underlines investigative journalism site ProPublica in an investigation by Jeff Yass published in June 2022.

The math enthusiast then used a similar approach to found SIG, his investment fund specializing in stock market bets boosted by algorithms. He was the first of his kind, and he hit the mark: He was one of the few stock marketers to make money during the stock market crash of 1987. Since then, his fortunes have only increased.

Very right-wing and very pro-Netanyahu

Jeff Yass doesn’t just use his money to support politicians who can protect his financial interests. It is also an ideological weapon for him. He defines himself as a liberal — for a minimal role of the state in the economy — but his election donations go mainly to far-right politicians like Donald Trump.

The Club for Growth, of which it is one of the main financiers, thus supported 42 Republican candidates who questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election or openly supported the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, underlines the Guardian.

But Jeff Yass is not an early “Trumpist” and has never officially declared support for the Republican candidate. Before seeking to directly set Donald Trump’s TikTok record, he lent $47 million to several of his rivals during the 2024 Republican primary, underlines the American channel NBC.

This billionaire is not only interested in American politics. In the Jewish faith, he also placed his fortune in the service of far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More precisely, he is one of the main financiers of the Kohelet Policy Forum, an ultra-conservative Israeli think tank, as France 24 already reported in February 2023. Thus, if Jeff Yass could still appear as the kingmaker of a few years ago. Pennsylvania, it seems, has decided to think a lot bigger.