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2023-06-20

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2022-07-17

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2022-07-17

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Tycoon Whose Bet Broke the Nickel Market Walks Away a Billionaire

2022-07-13

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href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/BK4133\">$Renewable Electricity(BK4133)$&nbsp;</a>","listText":"<a href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/BK4133\">$Renewable Electricity(BK4133)$&nbsp;</a>","text":"$Renewable 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09:25","market":"uk","language":"en","title":"Tycoon Whose Bet Broke the Nickel Market Walks Away a Billionaire","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2249540083","media":"Bloomberg","summary":"SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) --By 2.08pm Shanghai time on March 8, it was clear that Xiang Guangda's giant ","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) --By 2.08pm Shanghai time on March 8, it was clear that Xiang Guangda&#39;s giant bet on a fall in nickel prices was going spectacularly wrong.</p><p>Futures had just skyrocketed above US$100,000 a ton and his trade was more than US$10 billion underwater. It was threatening not only to bankrupt Mr Xiang&#39;s company, but to trigger a Lehman Brothers-like shock through the entire metals industry and possibly topple the London Metal Exchange (LME) itself.</p><p>But Mr Xiang was calm. Within hours, more than 50 bankers had arrived at his office wanting to hear how he planned to respond to the crisis. He told them simply: &#34;I&#39;m confident that we will overcome this.&#34;</p><p>And he did.</p><p>Four months on, the nickel price is falling, as Mr Xiang had predicted. The coterie of banks led by JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co that were baying for his blood has been repaid. He has closed out nearly all his short position in nickel, making a loss on the trade of about US$1 billion - a manageable sum given the profits being generated elsewhere in his business empire, say people who know him.</p><p>Crucially: the man nicknamed &#39;Big Shot&#39; in Chinese commodities circles is poised to walk away from the fiasco with his multibillion-dollar mining and steelmaking company, Tsingshan Holding Group, intact and even expanding.</p><p>But while Mr Xiang moves on, others are left dealing with the destruction wrought by the crisis. His miraculous escape was thanks in no small part to the actions of the LME, which controversially intervened to prevent prices from rising and then suspended trading until Mr Xiang had struck a deal with his banks.</p><p>Those on the other side of the trade, who lost billions, were furious. Months later, the LME is dealing with a raft of investigations and lawsuits, and the nickel market is still reeling.</p><p>&#34;Nice to see that @jpmorgan and The Big Shot got out of this whole thing with only scratches,&#34; Cliff Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management, said last week in a tweet thick with sarcasm. &#34;It&#39;s just heart warming.&#34;</p><p>This account of how Mr Xiang extricated himself from a short squeeze that rocked the global metals markets is based on numerous interviews with people who were involved, all of whom requested anonymity. Multiple attempts to seek comment from Tsingshan were unsuccessful.</p><h2>Massive short squeeze</h2><p>Mr Xiang had built up his massive short position in late 2021 and early 2022 partly as a hedge, partly as a bet that a planned jump in Tsingshan&#39;s production this year would drag down prices. But when Russia&#39;s invasion of Ukraine jolted global markets, nickel started climbing - gradually at first, before rocketing 250 per cent in an epic squeeze.</p><p>On the evening of March 8, senior bankers crowded into a room at Tsingshan&#39;s headquarters demanding answers. Others dialed in for video calls from London or Singapore. Of those present, some didn&#39;t leave until early the next morning.</p><p>More On This TopicXiang Guangda, the metals &#39;visionary&#39; who brought nickel market to a standstillNickel trading halted after unprecedented 250% spike amid Russia supply fears</p><p>The crowd that night was so large because Mr Xiang&#39;s position was spread across about 10 banks and brokers - he had been a good client for many of them, including JPMorgan, for years. But after nickel started spiking on March 7, Tsingshan struggled to meet its margin calls. Now he owed each of them hundreds of millions of dollars.</p><p>The LME had eventually intervened to halt trading a couple of hours after nickel hit US$100,000. It also canceled billions of dollars of transactions, bringing the price back to US$48,078, where it closed the previous day, in what amounted to a lifeline for Mr Xiang and Tsingshan.</p><p>To reopen the market, the LME proposed a solution: Mr Xiang should strike a deal with holders of long positions to close out his trade. But a price of around US$50,000 would be more than twice the level at which he had entered his short position, and would mean accepting billions of dollars in losses.</p><p>Mr Xiang, who is in his early 60s, stood firm. From a start making frames for car doors and windows in Wenzhou, eastern China, he&#39;d built Tsingshan into the world&#39;s largest nickel and stainless steel producer, with an empire stretching from mines in remote Indonesian islands to steel mills on China&#39;s east coast. Along the way, he&#39;d acquired a reputation for visionary thinking and a taste for betting big.</p><p>The spike in prices and the trading freeze caused havoc for companies that use nickel, like stainless steel mills and makers of batteries for electric vehicles. Some simply stopped taking new orders. On the LME, dealers were left frantically trying to recoup missed margin calls from clients who couldn&#39;t pay, and at least one had to seek financial support from its parent company.</p><p>Yet with unprecedented chaos rippling through the industry, Mr Xiang - still facing his bankers in the early hours of March 9 - had a key advantage. They were more terrified than he was.</p><p>If he refused to pay, they would have to chase him in courts in Indonesia and China. What&#39;s more, he had executed his nickel trade through a variety of corporate entities - such as the Hong Kong branch of battery unit Ruipu Energy - and it wasn&#39;t clear the banks would even have the right to seize Tsingshan&#39;s most valuable assets.</p><p>JPMorgan, which had the biggest exposure, took the lead. The group included some international players like Standard Chartered Bank and BNP Paribas, but many were Chinese and Singaporean banks that had little experience handling a situation like this.</p><h2>Personal guarantee</h2><p>Mr Xiang told the assembled bankers he had no intention of closing the position anywhere near US$50,000. A few hours later he was delivering the same message to Matthew Chamberlain, chief executive of the LME. Tsingshan was a strong company, he said, and it had the support of the Chinese government. There would be no backing down.</p><p>Instead, he wrote a list of the assets he was willing to put up as collateral: a string of ferronickel plants in Indonesia. But for some of the bankers, that wasn&#39;t enough. They wouldn&#39;t be able to do any due diligence on the Indonesian assets for weeks or months, and even those who worked closely with Tsingshan hadn&#39;t seen the facilities for years because of the pandemic.</p><p>So Mr Xiang made a further concession that was both valuable and, in Chinese business culture, humbling: a personal guarantee. If Tsingshan didn&#39;t pay its debts, the bankers could turf him out of his home. That was what he was willing to offer. Take it or leave it.</p><p>More On This TopicMetal traders reel as nickel chaos recalls market&#39;s darkest daysLondon Metal Exchange CEO calls for more powers to intervene as nickel trading halt continues</p><p>It wasn&#39;t much of a choice. On March 14, a week after the chaos that engulfed the nickel market, Tsingshan announced a deal with its banks under which they agreed not to pursue the company for the billions it owed for a period of time. In exchange, Mr Xiang agreed a series of price levels at which he would reduce his nickel position once prices dropped below about US$30,000.</p><p>When the market reopened two days later, prices moved lower, easing the strain on Mr Xiang and the banks. A brief dip below US$30,000 allowed Tsingshan to cover about 20 per cent of its short position.</p><p>The pressure on the LME was only intensifying, however. The exchange&#39;s regulators launched reviews of its governance and oversight and many hedge funds were still furious at the LME&#39;s decision to cancel trades.Open interest across the exchange&#39;s six main metals slid to the lowest in more than a decade as traders headed for the exit.</p><p>Each month, Tsingshan and its banks reviewed their standstill agreement. After the initial dip, nickel spent long stretches in limbo with prices hovering around US$33,000.</p><p>It was a nervous time. Tsingshan still had a vast short position, meaning it and its banks could still be exposed to large losses if prices started rising again - for example, if sanctions against Russia led to an actual disruption in nickel supplies, which so far they hadn&#39;t.</p><p>Finally, in May, prices tumbled decisively below the key US$30,000 level after China&#39;s lockdowns dented metals market sentiment. Over the following weeks, Tsingshan reduced its position - which in early March had been over 150,000 tons - to just 60,000 tons.</p><p>By this point, prices were below the level at which Tsingshan had stopped being able to pay its margin calls in early March, which meant Mr Xiang no longer owed the banks any money.</p><p>By the end of June Mr Xiang had exited his position entirely with JPMorgan and several other banks, leaving him with a remaining short of less than 20,000 tons.</p><p>People familiar with the matter estimate Tsingshan&#39;s losses on the trade at around US$1 billion. Mr Xiang isn&#39;t concerned. The loss has been roughly offset by the profits of his nickel operations over the same period. The standstill agreement, which Mr Xiang extended from the initial three months, is set to expire in mid-July.</p><p>Now &#39;Big Shot&#39; is moving on with his life, focusing on plans for the future at Tsingshan, which had revenues of US$56 billion last year. His ability to trade on the LME may be reduced, for now at least, but he is still able to trade on the Shanghai Futures Exchange. He has ambitions to expand, not only in Asia, but also to Africa. And Tsingshan is as powerful as ever in the nickel market: a massive increase in production from his plants in Indonesia is one of the key factors driving prices lower, much as Mr Xiang predicted.</p><p>But while Mr Xiang may be moving on, the LME is still dealing with the fallout. Regulators have pointed to the chaos in nickel as a sign of the risks lurking in commodity markets, and called for greater oversight of the entire sector. Hedge fund Elliot Investment Management and trading firm Jane Street have launched legal action against the LME, seeking nearly US$500 million.</p><p>And the nickel market is still broken, say people involved in it, with both open interest and trading volumes stuck at sharply lower levels as traders step away from using LME prices in their contracts. Jim Lennon, a veteran nickel market-watcher and managing director of Red Door Research, estimates that less than 25 per cent of global nickel output is now being sold on the basis of LME prices, down from 50 per cent before the crisis in March.</p><p>&#34;A lot of the industry now has temporarily disengaged from the LME,&#34; he says. &#34;The market is still functioning, but it&#39;s struggling.&#34;</p></body></html>","source":"lsy1584095487587","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Tycoon Whose Bet Broke the Nickel Market Walks Away a Billionaire</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nTycoon Whose Bet Broke the Nickel Market Walks Away a Billionaire\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-07-17 09:25 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/tycoon-whose-bet-broke-the-nickel-market-walks-away-a-billionaire><strong>Bloomberg</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) --By 2.08pm Shanghai time on March 8, it was clear that Xiang Guangda's giant bet on a fall in nickel prices was going spectacularly wrong.Futures had just skyrocketed above US$...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/tycoon-whose-bet-broke-the-nickel-market-walks-away-a-billionaire\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"NICK.UK":"镍ETF","NIC.AU":"Nickel Industries Ltd","JJN":"镍ETN-iPath"},"source_url":"https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/tycoon-whose-bet-broke-the-nickel-market-walks-away-a-billionaire","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2249540083","content_text":"SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) --By 2.08pm Shanghai time on March 8, it was clear that Xiang Guangda's giant bet on a fall in nickel prices was going spectacularly wrong.Futures had just skyrocketed above US$100,000 a ton and his trade was more than US$10 billion underwater. It was threatening not only to bankrupt Mr Xiang's company, but to trigger a Lehman Brothers-like shock through the entire metals industry and possibly topple the London Metal Exchange (LME) itself.But Mr Xiang was calm. Within hours, more than 50 bankers had arrived at his office wanting to hear how he planned to respond to the crisis. He told them simply: \"I'm confident that we will overcome this.\"And he did.Four months on, the nickel price is falling, as Mr Xiang had predicted. The coterie of banks led by JPMorgan Chase & Co that were baying for his blood has been repaid. He has closed out nearly all his short position in nickel, making a loss on the trade of about US$1 billion - a manageable sum given the profits being generated elsewhere in his business empire, say people who know him.Crucially: the man nicknamed 'Big Shot' in Chinese commodities circles is poised to walk away from the fiasco with his multibillion-dollar mining and steelmaking company, Tsingshan Holding Group, intact and even expanding.But while Mr Xiang moves on, others are left dealing with the destruction wrought by the crisis. His miraculous escape was thanks in no small part to the actions of the LME, which controversially intervened to prevent prices from rising and then suspended trading until Mr Xiang had struck a deal with his banks.Those on the other side of the trade, who lost billions, were furious. Months later, the LME is dealing with a raft of investigations and lawsuits, and the nickel market is still reeling.\"Nice to see that @jpmorgan and The Big Shot got out of this whole thing with only scratches,\" Cliff Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management, said last week in a tweet thick with sarcasm. \"It's just heart warming.\"This account of how Mr Xiang extricated himself from a short squeeze that rocked the global metals markets is based on numerous interviews with people who were involved, all of whom requested anonymity. Multiple attempts to seek comment from Tsingshan were unsuccessful.Massive short squeezeMr Xiang had built up his massive short position in late 2021 and early 2022 partly as a hedge, partly as a bet that a planned jump in Tsingshan's production this year would drag down prices. But when Russia's invasion of Ukraine jolted global markets, nickel started climbing - gradually at first, before rocketing 250 per cent in an epic squeeze.On the evening of March 8, senior bankers crowded into a room at Tsingshan's headquarters demanding answers. Others dialed in for video calls from London or Singapore. Of those present, some didn't leave until early the next morning.More On This TopicXiang Guangda, the metals 'visionary' who brought nickel market to a standstillNickel trading halted after unprecedented 250% spike amid Russia supply fearsThe crowd that night was so large because Mr Xiang's position was spread across about 10 banks and brokers - he had been a good client for many of them, including JPMorgan, for years. But after nickel started spiking on March 7, Tsingshan struggled to meet its margin calls. Now he owed each of them hundreds of millions of dollars.The LME had eventually intervened to halt trading a couple of hours after nickel hit US$100,000. It also canceled billions of dollars of transactions, bringing the price back to US$48,078, where it closed the previous day, in what amounted to a lifeline for Mr Xiang and Tsingshan.To reopen the market, the LME proposed a solution: Mr Xiang should strike a deal with holders of long positions to close out his trade. But a price of around US$50,000 would be more than twice the level at which he had entered his short position, and would mean accepting billions of dollars in losses.Mr Xiang, who is in his early 60s, stood firm. From a start making frames for car doors and windows in Wenzhou, eastern China, he'd built Tsingshan into the world's largest nickel and stainless steel producer, with an empire stretching from mines in remote Indonesian islands to steel mills on China's east coast. Along the way, he'd acquired a reputation for visionary thinking and a taste for betting big.The spike in prices and the trading freeze caused havoc for companies that use nickel, like stainless steel mills and makers of batteries for electric vehicles. Some simply stopped taking new orders. On the LME, dealers were left frantically trying to recoup missed margin calls from clients who couldn't pay, and at least one had to seek financial support from its parent company.Yet with unprecedented chaos rippling through the industry, Mr Xiang - still facing his bankers in the early hours of March 9 - had a key advantage. They were more terrified than he was.If he refused to pay, they would have to chase him in courts in Indonesia and China. What's more, he had executed his nickel trade through a variety of corporate entities - such as the Hong Kong branch of battery unit Ruipu Energy - and it wasn't clear the banks would even have the right to seize Tsingshan's most valuable assets.JPMorgan, which had the biggest exposure, took the lead. The group included some international players like Standard Chartered Bank and BNP Paribas, but many were Chinese and Singaporean banks that had little experience handling a situation like this.Personal guaranteeMr Xiang told the assembled bankers he had no intention of closing the position anywhere near US$50,000. A few hours later he was delivering the same message to Matthew Chamberlain, chief executive of the LME. Tsingshan was a strong company, he said, and it had the support of the Chinese government. There would be no backing down.Instead, he wrote a list of the assets he was willing to put up as collateral: a string of ferronickel plants in Indonesia. But for some of the bankers, that wasn't enough. They wouldn't be able to do any due diligence on the Indonesian assets for weeks or months, and even those who worked closely with Tsingshan hadn't seen the facilities for years because of the pandemic.So Mr Xiang made a further concession that was both valuable and, in Chinese business culture, humbling: a personal guarantee. If Tsingshan didn't pay its debts, the bankers could turf him out of his home. That was what he was willing to offer. Take it or leave it.More On This TopicMetal traders reel as nickel chaos recalls market's darkest daysLondon Metal Exchange CEO calls for more powers to intervene as nickel trading halt continuesIt wasn't much of a choice. On March 14, a week after the chaos that engulfed the nickel market, Tsingshan announced a deal with its banks under which they agreed not to pursue the company for the billions it owed for a period of time. In exchange, Mr Xiang agreed a series of price levels at which he would reduce his nickel position once prices dropped below about US$30,000.When the market reopened two days later, prices moved lower, easing the strain on Mr Xiang and the banks. A brief dip below US$30,000 allowed Tsingshan to cover about 20 per cent of its short position.The pressure on the LME was only intensifying, however. The exchange's regulators launched reviews of its governance and oversight and many hedge funds were still furious at the LME's decision to cancel trades.Open interest across the exchange's six main metals slid to the lowest in more than a decade as traders headed for the exit.Each month, Tsingshan and its banks reviewed their standstill agreement. After the initial dip, nickel spent long stretches in limbo with prices hovering around US$33,000.It was a nervous time. Tsingshan still had a vast short position, meaning it and its banks could still be exposed to large losses if prices started rising again - for example, if sanctions against Russia led to an actual disruption in nickel supplies, which so far they hadn't.Finally, in May, prices tumbled decisively below the key US$30,000 level after China's lockdowns dented metals market sentiment. Over the following weeks, Tsingshan reduced its position - which in early March had been over 150,000 tons - to just 60,000 tons.By this point, prices were below the level at which Tsingshan had stopped being able to pay its margin calls in early March, which meant Mr Xiang no longer owed the banks any money.By the end of June Mr Xiang had exited his position entirely with JPMorgan and several other banks, leaving him with a remaining short of less than 20,000 tons.People familiar with the matter estimate Tsingshan's losses on the trade at around US$1 billion. Mr Xiang isn't concerned. The loss has been roughly offset by the profits of his nickel operations over the same period. The standstill agreement, which Mr Xiang extended from the initial three months, is set to expire in mid-July.Now 'Big Shot' is moving on with his life, focusing on plans for the future at Tsingshan, which had revenues of US$56 billion last year. His ability to trade on the LME may be reduced, for now at least, but he is still able to trade on the Shanghai Futures Exchange. He has ambitions to expand, not only in Asia, but also to Africa. And Tsingshan is as powerful as ever in the nickel market: a massive increase in production from his plants in Indonesia is one of the key factors driving prices lower, much as Mr Xiang predicted.But while Mr Xiang may be moving on, the LME is still dealing with the fallout. Regulators have pointed to the chaos in nickel as a sign of the risks lurking in commodity markets, and called for greater oversight of the entire sector. Hedge fund Elliot Investment Management and trading firm Jane Street have launched legal action against the LME, seeking nearly US$500 million.And the nickel market is still broken, say people involved in it, with both open interest and trading volumes stuck at sharply lower levels as traders step away from using LME prices in their contracts. Jim Lennon, a veteran nickel market-watcher and managing director of Red Door Research, estimates that less than 25 per cent of global nickel output is now being sold on the basis of LME prices, down from 50 per cent before the crisis in March.\"A lot of the industry now has temporarily disengaged from the LME,\" he says. \"The market is still functioning, but it's struggling.\"","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":498,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9078378471,"gmtCreate":1657643472793,"gmtModify":1676536038556,"author":{"id":"4119976725597262","authorId":"4119976725597262","name":"ItsJK","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/4bc3f54e7403c321f1e31d13f104e214","crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":1,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4119976725597262","authorIdStr":"4119976725597262"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"<a href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/HSDT\">$Helius Medical Technologies, Inc.(HSDT)$</a>Helius Medical Technologies, Inc. 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publishes the world’s most trusted business news and financial information in a variety of media.","home_visible":0,"media_name":"Dow Jones","id":"106","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/150f88aa4d182df19190059f4a365e99"},"pubTimestamp":1658019535,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2251415343?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-07-17 08:58","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Elon Musk's Inner Circle Rocked by Fight Over His $230 Billion Fortune","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2251415343","media":"Dow Jones","summary":"Late last year, Jared Birchall cornered his boss, Elon Musk.Mr. Birchall, a straight-laced, 48-year-","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>Late last year, Jared Birchall cornered his boss, Elon Musk.</p><p>Mr. Birchall, a straight-laced, 48-year-old wealth manager who rose to become Mr. Musk&#39;s top deputy and the head of his family office, had growing concerns about a new power player in the Tesla Inc. CEO&#39;s orbit.</p><p>Mr. Musk was increasingly relying on a new adviser, a 34-year-old, Russian-born ex-professional gambler named Igor Kurganov. Mr. Kurganov spent some of the pandemic sleeping in Mr. Musk&#39;s home, where they chatted late into the night about how the world&#39;s richest person might use his fortune to help shape the planet through a giving strategy known as &#34;effective altruism.&#34;</p><p>Mr. Kurganov had no experience in finance or security but was suddenly a central figure in both areas for Mr. Musk. He had moved from London to Texas and replaced some of Mr. Musk&#39;s protection detail with new hires of his own. Not long after, the Tesla CEO told Mr. Birchall that he was so taken by the younger man&#39;s ideas that he wanted to leave him in charge of his charitable giving, dispersing funds from Mr. Musk&#39;s vast private fortune, currently around $230 billion, as he saw fit.</p><p>&#34;Elon,&#34; Mr. Birchall told his boss, according to three people briefed afterward. &#34;You can&#39;t.&#34;</p><p>The clash between the two men, and their dueling efforts to gain the upper hand with Mr. Musk, provides a peek into the often tumultuous private workings of Mr. Musk&#39;s inner circle. As Mr. Musk&#39;s breakneck, $44 billion bid for Twitter shows, the entrepreneur can be prone to quick decisions, ones that he can reverse just as quickly as he makes them. That deal is now in peril, with Mr. Musk trying to walk away and Twitter suing him to complete it.</p><p>All the while he is egged on by a rotating crew of investors, underlings and ever-changing friends whose power and personal wealth is closely tied to their proximity to Mr. Musk, according to people who do business with him.</p><p><a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/TWOA.U\">Two</a> men in particular have pulled the Tesla CEO in opposing directions.</p><p>Mr. Birchall is an Eagle Scout and practicing Mormon who doesn&#39;t smoke or drink and grew up traveling California as part of a song-and-dance troupe called &#34;The Birchall Family Singers.&#34; He declined to be interviewed through a representative of Mr. Musk&#39;s foundation.</p><p>Mr. Kurganov is a high-roller with a reported more than $18 million in poker winnings, with long hair and beard and a peaceful demeanor. He has said in a podcast interview that he dropped out of college because he was smoking too much marijuana. He didn&#39;t respond to requests for comment.</p><p>Last winter, Mr. Musk came to a compromise between the two. He allowed Mr. Kurganov to oversee $5.7 billion in Tesla shares that the CEO pledged late last year to eventually donate to charity. The rest of Mr. Musk&#39;s overall fortune remained under Mr. Birchall&#39;s purview.</p><p>That decision wasn&#39;t, however, the end of the fracas.</p><p>This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen people close to Messrs. Musk, Birchall and Kurganov, including associates of the Musk Foundation and investors.</p><h2>Ultimate fixer</h2><p>For a man of immense resources, Mr. Musk is a minnow in the world of big-dollar philanthropy. Compared with other magnates such as Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, whose wealth, like Mr. Musk&#39;s, is tied up in shares of their companies, Mr. Musk has said little concrete about his approach to giving. He didn&#39;t respond to requests for comment.</p><p>Mr. Musk&#39;s personal foundation gave away $23.6 million in fiscal 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, filings show. That represented roughly 0.02% of his net worth as of the end of that year, according to Forbes rankings.</p><p>Though Mr. Musk is known to favor his own counsel most of all, the man in charge of his foundation since 2016 has been Mr. Birchall, one of the longest standing in his inner circle.</p><p>The alliance reflects Mr. Birchall&#39;s role as the ultimate fixer for Mr. Musk, taking care of matters large and small. In addition to handling billions in assets, Mr. Birchall in 2018 under a pseudonym registered the website www.justballs.com, for example, after Mr. Musk mused online that he might want to own the domain name someday, legal documents show.</p><p>Mr. Birchall entered the technology world through finance. After his brief singing stint with his siblings -- he is one of 11 children -- he attended Brigham Young University.</p><p>He then spent a year at Merrill Lynch, where he was discharged for what the firm described in a filing as &#34;sending correspondence to a client without management approval.&#34;</p><p>Mr. Birchall eventually moved into private wealth and crossed paths with Mr. Musk about a decade ago while working as a client adviser in <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/MSTLW\">Morgan Stanley</a>&#39;s southern California offices. There, he impressed Mr. Musk by helping arrange hundreds of millions of dollars of loans from the investment bank at a time when the Tesla co-founder was strapped for cash, a person close to Mr. Musk says. When Mr. Musk started a private firm to manage his own money roughly six years ago, he tapped Mr. Birchall to run it.</p><p>Mr. Birchall&#39;s work for Mr. Musk has at times led him into strange public controversies and lawsuits. After a British spelunker criticized Mr. Musk&#39;s offer to help rescue a youth soccer team trapped in a flooded Thailand cave in 2018, Mr. Birchall created a fake email address under the name &#34;James Brickhouse&#34; to hire a private investigator to investigate the man, according to court documents.</p><p>Mr. Musk subsequently called the man &#34;pedo guy&#34; in a tweet, though he later apologized and said it was a joking taunt. The spelunker unsuccessfully sued Mr. Musk for defamation in a Los Angeles federal court.</p><p>In addition to his role helping manage Mr. Musk&#39;s fortune, Mr. Birchall is also a director of his tunneling startup, Boring Co., and chief executive officer of Mr. Musk&#39;s Neuralink, which aims to make a brain implant that could be used by quadriplegic patients to control a computer or other devices.</p><p>When Mr. Musk announced in 2020 he would move from California to Texas, Mr. Birchall moved his family there, too. He has since become the closest thing Mr. Musk has to a public face in the Texas capital, handling business and attending events on Mr. Musk&#39;s behalf.</p><p>&#34;No one else you reach out to who is close to Elon is going to return your calls,&#34; says Tyson Tuttle, former chief executive of Austin semiconductor manufacturer Silicon Labs.</p><h2>&#39;Make big moves&#39;</h2><p>Mr. Kurganov first became friendly with Mr. Musk socially.</p><p>Born in Russia but raised in Germany from age 4 by parents who were engineers by trade, Mr. Kurganov grew up in a working class, immigrant household, according to an interview he gave to the Paul Phua Poker podcast.</p><p>In his 20s, he gained a level of fame as a professional poker player. Beginning around a decade ago, he began playing high-stakes tournaments in Las Vegas and racking up wins, fellow poker players say. He earned particular renown in 2012 when he won a EUR1,080,000 purse in Monte Carlo.</p><p>He was known as an aggressive player, and had the respect of his fellow pros, the players say. &#34;Igor had a willingness to play a lot of hands and make big moves,&#34; says one of them, Dan Smith.</p><p>Though he was spending much of his time in Las Vegas, his personality didn&#39;t match the city&#39;s loud stereotypes. One person who knows him says he was often drawn into long, philosophical conversations on topics such as the rise of artificial intelligence in poker. Mr. Kurganov was concerned that a computer program could be built that could beat even the most talented human player.</p><p>Ging Masinda, a Las Vegas marketer and acquaintance of Mr. Kurganov, says the flashiest thing about him is that he sometimes wears eyeliner. &#34;There&#39;s a kid in him,&#34; she says.</p><p>In a 2015 interview on the Poker Life Podcast, he said he was developing an accounting app for poker players. He also co-founded the organization Raising for Effective Giving, designed to help poker players, as well as fantasy-sports players and finance professionals, find the right charities to which to donate their winnings, according to archived webpages.</p><p>REG was focused on effective altruism, an approach to giving that suggests that inherently subjective qualities such as relative charitable need can be quantified. It&#39;s still a niche approach, because many charitable experts say it can encourage an impersonal, utilitarian approach to complicated moral issues.</p><p>Mr. Kurganov&#39;s social life, the fellow poker players say, revolved around his longtime partner, fellow professional poker player Liv Boeree. Ms. Boeree has long been friends with the recording artist Grimes, who was first romantically linked to Mr. Musk in 2018. Around the same time, Mr. Musk made Ms. Boeree one of the handful of people he follows on Twitter.</p><p>&#34;She was elated&#34; about the follow, according to Joe Stapleton, a poker commentator who spoke to her about it.</p><p>The two couples began spending time together. Messrs. Musk and Kurganov bonded over a shared love of Burning Man, the free-spirited desert festival that both regularly attend. Ms. Boeree, meanwhile, stayed close with Grimes; the two women posted photos together on social media. Ms. Boeree didn&#39;t respond to requests for comment, and Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, couldn&#39;t be reached.</p><p>The introduction to Mr. Musk came as Mr. Kurganov was soon to retire from professional poker with millions in personal winnings. Yet his poker accounting app had never gotten off the ground, and REG remained small-fry in terms of the amount of money it directed.</p><p>REG said on its website that it directed $3.1 million in charitable giving in 2019, the most recent year mentioned, which the organization said &#34;reflects all donations that have been significantly influenced by us.&#34; The amount couldn&#39;t be independently verified. REG didn&#39;t respond to requests for comment.</p><p>Copyright (c) 2022 Dow Jones &amp; Company, Inc.</p></body></html>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Elon Musk's Inner Circle Rocked by Fight Over His $230 Billion Fortune</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nElon Musk's Inner Circle Rocked by Fight Over His $230 Billion Fortune\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<div class=\"head\" \">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/150f88aa4d182df19190059f4a365e99);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Dow Jones </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2022-07-17 08:58</p>\n</div>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<html><head></head><body><p>Late last year, Jared Birchall cornered his boss, Elon Musk.</p><p>Mr. Birchall, a straight-laced, 48-year-old wealth manager who rose to become Mr. Musk&#39;s top deputy and the head of his family office, had growing concerns about a new power player in the Tesla Inc. CEO&#39;s orbit.</p><p>Mr. Musk was increasingly relying on a new adviser, a 34-year-old, Russian-born ex-professional gambler named Igor Kurganov. Mr. Kurganov spent some of the pandemic sleeping in Mr. Musk&#39;s home, where they chatted late into the night about how the world&#39;s richest person might use his fortune to help shape the planet through a giving strategy known as &#34;effective altruism.&#34;</p><p>Mr. Kurganov had no experience in finance or security but was suddenly a central figure in both areas for Mr. Musk. He had moved from London to Texas and replaced some of Mr. Musk&#39;s protection detail with new hires of his own. Not long after, the Tesla CEO told Mr. Birchall that he was so taken by the younger man&#39;s ideas that he wanted to leave him in charge of his charitable giving, dispersing funds from Mr. Musk&#39;s vast private fortune, currently around $230 billion, as he saw fit.</p><p>&#34;Elon,&#34; Mr. Birchall told his boss, according to three people briefed afterward. &#34;You can&#39;t.&#34;</p><p>The clash between the two men, and their dueling efforts to gain the upper hand with Mr. Musk, provides a peek into the often tumultuous private workings of Mr. Musk&#39;s inner circle. As Mr. Musk&#39;s breakneck, $44 billion bid for Twitter shows, the entrepreneur can be prone to quick decisions, ones that he can reverse just as quickly as he makes them. That deal is now in peril, with Mr. Musk trying to walk away and Twitter suing him to complete it.</p><p>All the while he is egged on by a rotating crew of investors, underlings and ever-changing friends whose power and personal wealth is closely tied to their proximity to Mr. Musk, according to people who do business with him.</p><p><a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/TWOA.U\">Two</a> men in particular have pulled the Tesla CEO in opposing directions.</p><p>Mr. Birchall is an Eagle Scout and practicing Mormon who doesn&#39;t smoke or drink and grew up traveling California as part of a song-and-dance troupe called &#34;The Birchall Family Singers.&#34; He declined to be interviewed through a representative of Mr. Musk&#39;s foundation.</p><p>Mr. Kurganov is a high-roller with a reported more than $18 million in poker winnings, with long hair and beard and a peaceful demeanor. He has said in a podcast interview that he dropped out of college because he was smoking too much marijuana. He didn&#39;t respond to requests for comment.</p><p>Last winter, Mr. Musk came to a compromise between the two. He allowed Mr. Kurganov to oversee $5.7 billion in Tesla shares that the CEO pledged late last year to eventually donate to charity. The rest of Mr. Musk&#39;s overall fortune remained under Mr. Birchall&#39;s purview.</p><p>That decision wasn&#39;t, however, the end of the fracas.</p><p>This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen people close to Messrs. Musk, Birchall and Kurganov, including associates of the Musk Foundation and investors.</p><h2>Ultimate fixer</h2><p>For a man of immense resources, Mr. Musk is a minnow in the world of big-dollar philanthropy. Compared with other magnates such as Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, whose wealth, like Mr. Musk&#39;s, is tied up in shares of their companies, Mr. Musk has said little concrete about his approach to giving. He didn&#39;t respond to requests for comment.</p><p>Mr. Musk&#39;s personal foundation gave away $23.6 million in fiscal 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, filings show. That represented roughly 0.02% of his net worth as of the end of that year, according to Forbes rankings.</p><p>Though Mr. Musk is known to favor his own counsel most of all, the man in charge of his foundation since 2016 has been Mr. Birchall, one of the longest standing in his inner circle.</p><p>The alliance reflects Mr. Birchall&#39;s role as the ultimate fixer for Mr. Musk, taking care of matters large and small. In addition to handling billions in assets, Mr. Birchall in 2018 under a pseudonym registered the website www.justballs.com, for example, after Mr. Musk mused online that he might want to own the domain name someday, legal documents show.</p><p>Mr. Birchall entered the technology world through finance. After his brief singing stint with his siblings -- he is one of 11 children -- he attended Brigham Young University.</p><p>He then spent a year at Merrill Lynch, where he was discharged for what the firm described in a filing as &#34;sending correspondence to a client without management approval.&#34;</p><p>Mr. Birchall eventually moved into private wealth and crossed paths with Mr. Musk about a decade ago while working as a client adviser in <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/MSTLW\">Morgan Stanley</a>&#39;s southern California offices. There, he impressed Mr. Musk by helping arrange hundreds of millions of dollars of loans from the investment bank at a time when the Tesla co-founder was strapped for cash, a person close to Mr. Musk says. When Mr. Musk started a private firm to manage his own money roughly six years ago, he tapped Mr. Birchall to run it.</p><p>Mr. Birchall&#39;s work for Mr. Musk has at times led him into strange public controversies and lawsuits. After a British spelunker criticized Mr. Musk&#39;s offer to help rescue a youth soccer team trapped in a flooded Thailand cave in 2018, Mr. Birchall created a fake email address under the name &#34;James Brickhouse&#34; to hire a private investigator to investigate the man, according to court documents.</p><p>Mr. Musk subsequently called the man &#34;pedo guy&#34; in a tweet, though he later apologized and said it was a joking taunt. The spelunker unsuccessfully sued Mr. Musk for defamation in a Los Angeles federal court.</p><p>In addition to his role helping manage Mr. Musk&#39;s fortune, Mr. Birchall is also a director of his tunneling startup, Boring Co., and chief executive officer of Mr. Musk&#39;s Neuralink, which aims to make a brain implant that could be used by quadriplegic patients to control a computer or other devices.</p><p>When Mr. Musk announced in 2020 he would move from California to Texas, Mr. Birchall moved his family there, too. He has since become the closest thing Mr. Musk has to a public face in the Texas capital, handling business and attending events on Mr. Musk&#39;s behalf.</p><p>&#34;No one else you reach out to who is close to Elon is going to return your calls,&#34; says Tyson Tuttle, former chief executive of Austin semiconductor manufacturer Silicon Labs.</p><h2>&#39;Make big moves&#39;</h2><p>Mr. Kurganov first became friendly with Mr. Musk socially.</p><p>Born in Russia but raised in Germany from age 4 by parents who were engineers by trade, Mr. Kurganov grew up in a working class, immigrant household, according to an interview he gave to the Paul Phua Poker podcast.</p><p>In his 20s, he gained a level of fame as a professional poker player. Beginning around a decade ago, he began playing high-stakes tournaments in Las Vegas and racking up wins, fellow poker players say. He earned particular renown in 2012 when he won a EUR1,080,000 purse in Monte Carlo.</p><p>He was known as an aggressive player, and had the respect of his fellow pros, the players say. &#34;Igor had a willingness to play a lot of hands and make big moves,&#34; says one of them, Dan Smith.</p><p>Though he was spending much of his time in Las Vegas, his personality didn&#39;t match the city&#39;s loud stereotypes. One person who knows him says he was often drawn into long, philosophical conversations on topics such as the rise of artificial intelligence in poker. Mr. Kurganov was concerned that a computer program could be built that could beat even the most talented human player.</p><p>Ging Masinda, a Las Vegas marketer and acquaintance of Mr. Kurganov, says the flashiest thing about him is that he sometimes wears eyeliner. &#34;There&#39;s a kid in him,&#34; she says.</p><p>In a 2015 interview on the Poker Life Podcast, he said he was developing an accounting app for poker players. He also co-founded the organization Raising for Effective Giving, designed to help poker players, as well as fantasy-sports players and finance professionals, find the right charities to which to donate their winnings, according to archived webpages.</p><p>REG was focused on effective altruism, an approach to giving that suggests that inherently subjective qualities such as relative charitable need can be quantified. It&#39;s still a niche approach, because many charitable experts say it can encourage an impersonal, utilitarian approach to complicated moral issues.</p><p>Mr. Kurganov&#39;s social life, the fellow poker players say, revolved around his longtime partner, fellow professional poker player Liv Boeree. Ms. Boeree has long been friends with the recording artist Grimes, who was first romantically linked to Mr. Musk in 2018. Around the same time, Mr. Musk made Ms. Boeree one of the handful of people he follows on Twitter.</p><p>&#34;She was elated&#34; about the follow, according to Joe Stapleton, a poker commentator who spoke to her about it.</p><p>The two couples began spending time together. Messrs. Musk and Kurganov bonded over a shared love of Burning Man, the free-spirited desert festival that both regularly attend. Ms. Boeree, meanwhile, stayed close with Grimes; the two women posted photos together on social media. Ms. Boeree didn&#39;t respond to requests for comment, and Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, couldn&#39;t be reached.</p><p>The introduction to Mr. Musk came as Mr. Kurganov was soon to retire from professional poker with millions in personal winnings. Yet his poker accounting app had never gotten off the ground, and REG remained small-fry in terms of the amount of money it directed.</p><p>REG said on its website that it directed $3.1 million in charitable giving in 2019, the most recent year mentioned, which the organization said &#34;reflects all donations that have been significantly influenced by us.&#34; The amount couldn&#39;t be independently verified. REG didn&#39;t respond to requests for comment.</p><p>Copyright (c) 2022 Dow Jones &amp; Company, Inc.</p></body></html>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BK4574":"无人驾驶","BK4551":"寇图资本持仓","BK4548":"巴美列捷福持仓","BK4099":"汽车制造商","BK4527":"明星科技股","TWTR":"Twitter","BK4534":"瑞士信贷持仓","BK4581":"高盛持仓","TSLA":"特斯拉","BK4533":"AQR资本管理(全球第二大对冲基金)","BK4555":"新能源车","BK4550":"红杉资本持仓","BK4511":"特斯拉概念"},"source_url":"","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2251415343","content_text":"Late last year, Jared Birchall cornered his boss, Elon Musk.Mr. Birchall, a straight-laced, 48-year-old wealth manager who rose to become Mr. Musk's top deputy and the head of his family office, had growing concerns about a new power player in the Tesla Inc. CEO's orbit.Mr. Musk was increasingly relying on a new adviser, a 34-year-old, Russian-born ex-professional gambler named Igor Kurganov. Mr. Kurganov spent some of the pandemic sleeping in Mr. Musk's home, where they chatted late into the night about how the world's richest person might use his fortune to help shape the planet through a giving strategy known as \"effective altruism.\"Mr. Kurganov had no experience in finance or security but was suddenly a central figure in both areas for Mr. Musk. He had moved from London to Texas and replaced some of Mr. Musk's protection detail with new hires of his own. Not long after, the Tesla CEO told Mr. Birchall that he was so taken by the younger man's ideas that he wanted to leave him in charge of his charitable giving, dispersing funds from Mr. Musk's vast private fortune, currently around $230 billion, as he saw fit.\"Elon,\" Mr. Birchall told his boss, according to three people briefed afterward. \"You can't.\"The clash between the two men, and their dueling efforts to gain the upper hand with Mr. Musk, provides a peek into the often tumultuous private workings of Mr. Musk's inner circle. As Mr. Musk's breakneck, $44 billion bid for Twitter shows, the entrepreneur can be prone to quick decisions, ones that he can reverse just as quickly as he makes them. That deal is now in peril, with Mr. Musk trying to walk away and Twitter suing him to complete it.All the while he is egged on by a rotating crew of investors, underlings and ever-changing friends whose power and personal wealth is closely tied to their proximity to Mr. Musk, according to people who do business with him.Two men in particular have pulled the Tesla CEO in opposing directions.Mr. Birchall is an Eagle Scout and practicing Mormon who doesn't smoke or drink and grew up traveling California as part of a song-and-dance troupe called \"The Birchall Family Singers.\" He declined to be interviewed through a representative of Mr. Musk's foundation.Mr. Kurganov is a high-roller with a reported more than $18 million in poker winnings, with long hair and beard and a peaceful demeanor. He has said in a podcast interview that he dropped out of college because he was smoking too much marijuana. He didn't respond to requests for comment.Last winter, Mr. Musk came to a compromise between the two. He allowed Mr. Kurganov to oversee $5.7 billion in Tesla shares that the CEO pledged late last year to eventually donate to charity. The rest of Mr. Musk's overall fortune remained under Mr. Birchall's purview.That decision wasn't, however, the end of the fracas.This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen people close to Messrs. Musk, Birchall and Kurganov, including associates of the Musk Foundation and investors.Ultimate fixerFor a man of immense resources, Mr. Musk is a minnow in the world of big-dollar philanthropy. Compared with other magnates such as Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, whose wealth, like Mr. Musk's, is tied up in shares of their companies, Mr. Musk has said little concrete about his approach to giving. He didn't respond to requests for comment.Mr. Musk's personal foundation gave away $23.6 million in fiscal 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, filings show. That represented roughly 0.02% of his net worth as of the end of that year, according to Forbes rankings.Though Mr. Musk is known to favor his own counsel most of all, the man in charge of his foundation since 2016 has been Mr. Birchall, one of the longest standing in his inner circle.The alliance reflects Mr. Birchall's role as the ultimate fixer for Mr. Musk, taking care of matters large and small. In addition to handling billions in assets, Mr. Birchall in 2018 under a pseudonym registered the website www.justballs.com, for example, after Mr. Musk mused online that he might want to own the domain name someday, legal documents show.Mr. Birchall entered the technology world through finance. After his brief singing stint with his siblings -- he is one of 11 children -- he attended Brigham Young University.He then spent a year at Merrill Lynch, where he was discharged for what the firm described in a filing as \"sending correspondence to a client without management approval.\"Mr. Birchall eventually moved into private wealth and crossed paths with Mr. Musk about a decade ago while working as a client adviser in Morgan Stanley's southern California offices. There, he impressed Mr. Musk by helping arrange hundreds of millions of dollars of loans from the investment bank at a time when the Tesla co-founder was strapped for cash, a person close to Mr. Musk says. When Mr. Musk started a private firm to manage his own money roughly six years ago, he tapped Mr. Birchall to run it.Mr. Birchall's work for Mr. Musk has at times led him into strange public controversies and lawsuits. After a British spelunker criticized Mr. Musk's offer to help rescue a youth soccer team trapped in a flooded Thailand cave in 2018, Mr. Birchall created a fake email address under the name \"James Brickhouse\" to hire a private investigator to investigate the man, according to court documents.Mr. Musk subsequently called the man \"pedo guy\" in a tweet, though he later apologized and said it was a joking taunt. The spelunker unsuccessfully sued Mr. Musk for defamation in a Los Angeles federal court.In addition to his role helping manage Mr. Musk's fortune, Mr. Birchall is also a director of his tunneling startup, Boring Co., and chief executive officer of Mr. Musk's Neuralink, which aims to make a brain implant that could be used by quadriplegic patients to control a computer or other devices.When Mr. Musk announced in 2020 he would move from California to Texas, Mr. Birchall moved his family there, too. He has since become the closest thing Mr. Musk has to a public face in the Texas capital, handling business and attending events on Mr. Musk's behalf.\"No one else you reach out to who is close to Elon is going to return your calls,\" says Tyson Tuttle, former chief executive of Austin semiconductor manufacturer Silicon Labs.'Make big moves'Mr. Kurganov first became friendly with Mr. Musk socially.Born in Russia but raised in Germany from age 4 by parents who were engineers by trade, Mr. Kurganov grew up in a working class, immigrant household, according to an interview he gave to the Paul Phua Poker podcast.In his 20s, he gained a level of fame as a professional poker player. Beginning around a decade ago, he began playing high-stakes tournaments in Las Vegas and racking up wins, fellow poker players say. He earned particular renown in 2012 when he won a EUR1,080,000 purse in Monte Carlo.He was known as an aggressive player, and had the respect of his fellow pros, the players say. \"Igor had a willingness to play a lot of hands and make big moves,\" says one of them, Dan Smith.Though he was spending much of his time in Las Vegas, his personality didn't match the city's loud stereotypes. One person who knows him says he was often drawn into long, philosophical conversations on topics such as the rise of artificial intelligence in poker. Mr. Kurganov was concerned that a computer program could be built that could beat even the most talented human player.Ging Masinda, a Las Vegas marketer and acquaintance of Mr. Kurganov, says the flashiest thing about him is that he sometimes wears eyeliner. \"There's a kid in him,\" she says.In a 2015 interview on the Poker Life Podcast, he said he was developing an accounting app for poker players. He also co-founded the organization Raising for Effective Giving, designed to help poker players, as well as fantasy-sports players and finance professionals, find the right charities to which to donate their winnings, according to archived webpages.REG was focused on effective altruism, an approach to giving that suggests that inherently subjective qualities such as relative charitable need can be quantified. It's still a niche approach, because many charitable experts say it can encourage an impersonal, utilitarian approach to complicated moral issues.Mr. Kurganov's social life, the fellow poker players say, revolved around his longtime partner, fellow professional poker player Liv Boeree. Ms. Boeree has long been friends with the recording artist Grimes, who was first romantically linked to Mr. Musk in 2018. Around the same time, Mr. Musk made Ms. Boeree one of the handful of people he follows on Twitter.\"She was elated\" about the follow, according to Joe Stapleton, a poker commentator who spoke to her about it.The two couples began spending time together. Messrs. Musk and Kurganov bonded over a shared love of Burning Man, the free-spirited desert festival that both regularly attend. Ms. Boeree, meanwhile, stayed close with Grimes; the two women posted photos together on social media. Ms. Boeree didn't respond to requests for comment, and Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, couldn't be reached.The introduction to Mr. Musk came as Mr. Kurganov was soon to retire from professional poker with millions in personal winnings. Yet his poker accounting app had never gotten off the ground, and REG remained small-fry in terms of the amount of money it directed.REG said on its website that it directed $3.1 million in charitable giving in 2019, the most recent year mentioned, which the organization said \"reflects all donations that have been significantly influenced by us.\" The amount couldn't be independently verified. REG didn't respond to requests for comment.Copyright (c) 2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":244,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9078378471,"gmtCreate":1657643472793,"gmtModify":1676536038556,"author":{"id":"4119976725597262","authorId":"4119976725597262","name":"ItsJK","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/4bc3f54e7403c321f1e31d13f104e214","crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":1,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4119976725597262","authorIdStr":"4119976725597262"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"<a href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/HSDT\">$Helius Medical Technologies, Inc.(HSDT)$</a>Helius Medical Technologies, Inc. Announces Online Training for PoNS Therapy™","listText":"<a href=\"https://ttm.financial/S/HSDT\">$Helius Medical Technologies, Inc.(HSDT)$</a>Helius Medical Technologies, Inc. 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