Thanks in part to his controversial, Saudi-backed private equity firm Affinity Partners, Jared Kushner's fortune is approaching ten figures. His father-in-law's victory will likely get him there sooner.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2024/11/03/why-jared-kushner-will-become-a-billionaire-no-matter-who-wins/
0:00 Introduction
3:49 Is Jared Kushner Approaching Billionaire Territory?
7:57 Affinity Partners, Kushner's Private Equity Firm
10:15 Private Equity Is The New Investment
21:08 Will Kushner Enter Politics Again?
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Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2024/11/03/why-jared-kushner-will-become-a-billionaire-no-matter-who-wins/
0:00 Introduction
3:49 Is Jared Kushner Approaching Billionaire Territory?
7:57 Affinity Partners, Kushner's Private Equity Firm
10:15 Private Equity Is The New Investment
21:08 Will Kushner Enter Politics Again?
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
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00:00Hi, my name is Monica Hunter-Hart, and I am a reporter here at Forbes.
00:06I'm joined by Giacomo Tonini.
00:09He is my colleague, and we've done some reporting recently on Jared Kushner's net worth, so
00:13we're going to talk to you about that today.
00:14Welcome, Giacomo.
00:15Hi, Monica.
00:16Great to be here.
00:17So we just finished our evaluation.
00:20We came to, conservatively, a number of $900 million.
00:24So maybe we can just start by talking a little bit about the kind of broad aspects of that
00:28valuation, and then we can get into some of the specifics and the private equity firm
00:32that he's been working on, which is kind of the most interesting part, in my opinion.
00:38So yeah, I guess there are kind of three broad buckets here that we're looking at.
00:41There's the kind of lump category of art, personal real estate, and kind of other kind
00:50of cash-in investments that we have estimated at about $150 million.
00:55Then we have his family's real estate firm, which he used to run, no longer does.
00:59The Kushner Company.
01:00The Kushner Company, exactly.
01:02Mostly have a presence in kind of New Jersey and the South these days, and the kind of
01:08Baltimore, DC area.
01:11And that we have valued his 20% stake in that company at $580 million.
01:16And then we have this very interesting private equity firm that he founded a few years ago
01:21called Affinity Partners, founded that in 2021.
01:25That we have put at $170 million.
01:28He is the sole owner of the firm.
01:30So we were able to talk to Jared for this story.
01:34He told us a little bit about his kind of vision for Affinity.
01:36He actually has a lot of geopolitical goals for it that he's, they're kind of, they're
01:41a bit of a continuation from the work he was doing in the White House when he was a senior
01:45advisor to then President Donald Trump.
01:48So he's hoping to really use Affinity to increase investment between the Gulf and Israel.
01:54So his investments kind of mirror that so far, at least some of them.
01:58And he was talking to us a bit about how he really wants to do long-term investments.
02:02He's not kind of trying to do, sometimes private equity has a bit of a reputation of kind of
02:06coming in, quickly rearranging things, making drastic changes at a company and then exiting
02:12a stake quickly.
02:13But he wants to do much longer term projects and some more real estate than is maybe common
02:20in private equity.
02:21So that's kind of an overview.
02:24But this is definitely not a typical private equity firm.
02:27So maybe you could talk a little bit about what makes Affinity unique.
02:30Yeah, for sure.
02:31So like you said, it was formed in January 2021.
02:35So right as he was leaving the White House.
02:39And in the White House, like you said, he was working a lot of different things.
02:42But one thing that he talks about a lot in his memoir and also sort of in the pitch deck
02:46for Affinity when he was first starting it was his work on the Abraham Accords, right?
02:51Which were these normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, as well as Israel
02:57and Bahrain.
02:58And so when he went on and started Affinity, he brought together a very interesting group
03:04of investors.
03:06So they raised three billion, ultimately.
03:09Two billion came from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which was the cornerstone investor.
03:15Huge investment for Affinity.
03:17And at the time, there were reports that basically the investment committee for the Saudi Public
03:25Investment Fund had expressed concerns about it because Jared Kushner obviously at the
03:30time had very little experience in private equity.
03:34He had previously had a stake in his brother Josh's very successful venture capital firm
03:41Thrive and divested when he joined the White House in 2017.
03:47But he had little experience in this kind of private equity.
03:48Oh, actually, on that note, maybe that's a good place to just quickly say, you know,
03:53he's kind of approaching billionaire territory right now.
03:55He's 900 million and growing.
03:56He'll probably be a billionaire soon, per our estimations.
03:59If you'd kept that stake in Thrive, he would already be a billionaire at this point.
04:03Thrive was most recently valued at more than five billion dollars.
04:06So we don't know his exact stake, but sort of any stake that we would estimate he had
04:12would have already made him a billionaire by now.
04:14But divesting that and going to government cost him that.
04:18He told us it was four years off from making money.
04:21But now with Affinity, he's sort of getting there again.
04:25And but to that point, the sort of the investor committee, the Public Investment Fund expressed
04:31concerns.
04:32But ultimately, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman overrode those concerns and chose
04:37to invest anyway.
04:38And Kushner had built a close relationship with him, he's known as MBS, during his time
04:45at the White House.
04:46It was two billion from the Saudis.
04:49Then they raised more than 200 million each from an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund in
04:54the UAE, as well as a Qatari sovereign wealth fund.
04:59And then the remainder of the money, around 600 million or so, came from two investors.
05:05One we know the identity of, which is Terry Gu of Foxconn, which is the world's largest
05:09maker of iPhones, who Kushner also knew from his time in government and before.
05:16And then an unknown sixth investor.
05:20So with this two billion dollars, the first year, 2021-22, they didn't make that many
05:25investments.
05:26They obviously have a lot of froth in the markets after COVID, very high valuations.
05:32But since then, we've seen the firm make many more investments.
05:37As of last month, they deployed about 1.6 billion of those three billion dollars.
05:43They've invested in everything from a fitness tech startup in Germany to AI data centers.
05:53They've made investments alongside the UAE wealth fund, Mubadala, in a fast food franchise
06:00operator in Brazil.
06:03But their two most interesting and significant investments have been in two Israeli companies.
06:09Those closed, one in January of this year and one in July.
06:13They were more than 200 million dollars collectively.
06:16One is in the automotive and credit unit of a firm called Shlomo.
06:20The other one is in a publicly traded financial services firm, Phoenix.
06:25And what's interesting about them is that these investments marked the first ever time
06:28that we know, and that has been reported, of Qatari and Saudi investment in an Israeli
06:35company.
06:36And this happened through Affinity.
06:38And Jared Kushner obtained carve outs from both governments to allow him to do this.
06:43And he has said to us and sort of said publicly that this is a major goal of his, of fostering
06:52closer ties between Israel and Gulf countries through investment.
06:56And these mark sort of a milestone in that.
07:00And they both came after the October 7th attacks last year in Israel.
07:05And when we asked him about this, he said that actually, you know, the aftermath of
07:09that brought him closer to his investors.
07:11And the fact that he's able to invest their money in Israel still after that, to him,
07:17is sort of credit to his strategy.
07:20Yeah.
07:21However, going back to your point before, it is a very unusual firm.
07:24It's very new.
07:25It's only three years old.
07:27They only have one fund, this three billion dollar fund, with a very concentrated group
07:32of investors.
07:33Yeah.
07:34Two thirds from one country, Saudi Arabia.
07:38And it's a very rarefied group of investors, right?
07:42These big sovereign wealth funds.
07:45And when we were trying to value it because of that, it made it pretty difficult.
07:50So do you want to say a bit more maybe about how difficult it was to come to a valuation
07:55of such a young and kind of unusual firm?
07:57Yeah.
07:58Yeah.
07:59Well, I think also just important to say that I think the very fact of someone who was creating
08:04a private equity firm for the first time, as you said, and had little experience in
08:07this realm, receiving such giant paychecks or such giant investments was also remarkable
08:15in its own right.
08:16It makes it all the more unusual.
08:18But yeah, it was really hard to value Affinity.
08:21We have a standard private equity methodology that we normally use here at Forbes.
08:26And we have a great team of private equity kind of valuation guys that we work with who
08:32are really good at what they do.
08:34And they spent months earlier this year actually refining our method as they do every so often
08:40in preparation for our annual Forbes for 100 list of the richest Americans.
08:44And so we were all ready and set to use that method.
08:48But it turned out that basically because this is a new firm and Jared did not confirm to
08:57us whether he has plans to raise another fund, although that would be the kind of logical
09:02next step, usually when funds have been maybe 75 percent deployed.
09:05We're getting close to that level here.
09:07Yeah.
09:08Yeah.
09:09One would be raising a second fund.
09:10He's not quite there.
09:11So, you know, theoretically, he would plan to do another one, but he he wouldn't confirm
09:15that.
09:16And this is this is new.
09:17We don't know if there is the potential to do that again.
09:18We haven't seen any investment returns yet, so we don't know whether or not this is going
09:22to be a successful firm.
09:23It's just too soon to say.
09:26So normally when we value a private equity firm, we have we can basically bet that it
09:31is going to be continuing into the future.
09:33Right.
09:34Raising new funds.
09:35Raising new funds.
09:36Exactly.
09:37And kind of as one fund sort of expires, then the next one is coming up and it's this kind
09:42of recurring, yeah, recurring sort of effect so that we don't have that ability to say
09:49that here.
09:50And so we decided to use we had to kind of throw out everything that we typically know
09:54about how to value these kind of longstanding, well-established firms and create an entirely
09:59new methodology, which we came to with the help of many private equity analysts and investors
10:05into the stakes, stake investors into private equity firms.
10:09So maybe I guess you could talk a little bit more about that.
10:11Yeah, we talked to, I think, seven different, you know, private equity experts and people
10:16who, you know, buy stakes in private equity firms for a living, like you said.
10:20And what we basically came to was a simplified discounted cash flow valuation.
10:26So, you know, we know from public filings that the fees that Affinity charges to its
10:32investors is 2% for the non-Saudi investors, one and a quarter a year to the Saudis on
10:39that amount that they invested.
10:41So we know they make about $45 million in fees each year.
10:44Affinity keeps about 15% of that.
10:46And then we basically projected that out to the life of the fund, which is about 10
10:49years.
10:50When we were speaking to Jared, he said that the firm basically looks at a 7 to 10 year
10:55investment period for all its investments.
10:58So you know, looking out to about 2031 or so.
11:02And we also sort of estimated what the potential future returns would be, obviously, because
11:08there's that 7 to 10 year investment horizon.
11:11We don't know when the firm, when Affinity is going to be selling those investments and
11:17what those returns will be.
11:19Some of the companies it's invested in, for example, Phoenix and then QXO, which is a
11:26publicly traded firm founded by the billionaire Brad Jacobs, which Affinity invested in in
11:32July and Jared is also on the board of.
11:36Those investments have done quite well outpacing the S&P 500's returns since the summer.
11:40Whereas that firm they invested in in Brazil, which is that fast food franchise operator,
11:46that stock has been quite down this year.
11:48So too early to see.
11:50But you know, based on the recommendations of these experts, we tried to sort of project
11:54out what could be the sort of current value of those expected cash flows.
12:01So, you know, to make a long story short, it's a conservative valuation, right?
12:05We're basically looking at, and also looking after taxes to what would be attributable
12:09exactly, specifically to Jared, rather than what would someone pay to buy a stake in this
12:15firm?
12:16Because to your point before, it's too young and sort of too uncertain.
12:21However, though, the, you know, it was a very interesting reporting process.
12:27So, you know, we can get a bit later to sort of how the election might impact it.
12:32But what did you find the most interesting about this firm?
12:36Because obviously, you know, like we were talking about before, you know, Jared Kushner
12:42likely would already have been a billionaire had he sort of not gone into government.
12:47He could have sold that, he could have kept, sorry, that stake in Thrive Capital, which
12:52he divested.
12:53And also right before entering the White House, he was worth about $324 million.
12:58So you know, his net worth has obviously almost tripled since then, to our estimate of $900
13:02million or so.
13:04And in those previous five years, before he went into government, his net worth had
13:08already more than tripled.
13:09So, you know, he's done well, could have done better.
13:12Now we're looking at this firm, what do you find most interesting about it, about reporting
13:17on affinity?
13:18Yeah, so I mean, you're completely right.
13:21He's done very well.
13:24And he, you know, gave up a lot to enter government, the Thrive stake, etc.
13:30He didn't take a salary while he was in government.
13:32But we are also looking at this interesting case of him being able to capitalize on his
13:36experience in government to now make a lot more money.
13:40And who knows how much that is going to increase in the future.
13:43Again, right now we have affinity at $170 million.
13:47But it is kind of bringing up, it's become quite controversial, and it's bringing up
13:52these sort of ethics concerns that you sometimes see when people who were involved in the private
13:57sector enter government and then leave and enter the private sector again, and are able
14:01to kind of take advantage of either what they learned in government, the connections
14:05they made there, relationships, etc.
14:07And it's sort of brought up questions around that and sort of what do is, is all this okay?
14:13Or if it is legal, you know, should it be is what a lot of people are sort of talking
14:19about right now.
14:20For example, we spoke to this woman, Virginia Cantor, she works for the Citizens for Responsibility
14:26and Ethics in Washington.
14:27So it's a kind of government watchdog, Ethics Council, right?
14:30Exactly.
14:31The Chief Ethics Council.
14:32And so she has been involved in this space for many decades.
14:37And she was saying that she's actually never seen an example of quite this kind of scale
14:45of something like this happening, which is basically, you know, someone who was diplomatically
14:50involved with certain foreign governments at the White House, leaving, returning to
14:56the private sector, and then almost immediately being compensated with billions of investment
15:01from those exact same foreign governments.
15:04She said that she is completely unaware of anything like that ever happening to that
15:07degree.
15:10And so, you know, she was very clear in that, you know, this is not illegal.
15:16But she was saying it raises this kind of question of, well, if we are allowing this
15:21to kind of happen in our system, then we are potentially allowing for the possibility of
15:26a payoff of some sort of, she was using this word, payoff, to potentially happen where,
15:31you know, you're compensating, again, like, someone who worked in government for potentially
15:36giving preferential treatment to those same governmental powers and then being compensated
15:40for that afterwards.
15:41Of course, Jared has very clearly told us that is not what's going on here.
15:45He says, you know, we followed all of the laws and rules that we were supposed to.
15:51There was no conflict of interest.
15:52And there is nothing that I did with any of the Gulf powers that was not completely
15:57in American interest.
15:59We should also say that his diplomacy often did break with the norms and traditions of
16:06American foreign policy.
16:07But he is very much in the camp of everything I did was in the American interest.
16:13Regardless, you know, people like Virginia Cantor have sort of been talking about, you
16:19know, maybe this isn't the kind of system that we want.
16:21We don't want to kind of create these incentives for people to potentially go into public office
16:27with eventual compensation in mind or potentially to be influenced by foreign governments would
16:34be the kind of ultimate fear.
16:35She was saying that's the ultimate fear of that was one of the ultimate fears of the
16:38founding fathers, for example, was this sort of threat of undue foreign influence on the
16:43American government.
16:44So I think it'll be interesting to kind of watch to see if we ever have new legislation
16:48around this.
16:49It's probably unlikely that we would see that under a Trump administration, at least
16:55as a direct response to what Kushner is doing.
16:57And we'll probably see less, I guess, congressional scrutiny of affinity under this forthcoming
17:05Trump administration.
17:06There had been a kind of threat of congressional administration, excuse me, congressional investigation
17:10up until now from Senator Wyden of Oregon and others.
17:16But I'm not sure we will necessarily see those go anywhere now that we know that Trump is
17:19going to be entering the White House.
17:21So maybe you could say a bit more about how Trump's election is expected to impact affinity.
17:25Right.
17:26And so I think last month, Senator Wyden and then Representative Raskin had signed a joint
17:33letter that they sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to appoint a special
17:38counsel to investigate affinity.
17:40Again, like you said, Jared Kushner has said that, you know, there there's nothing in this
17:46letter and that there's no conflict of interest.
17:50And, you know, now with a incoming Trump administration of the Republican Senate and it seems likely
17:55a Republican House, probably there is not really any scope for any investigation of
18:01affinity.
18:02I mean, even under the Biden administration, there hasn't been a formal investigation.
18:08And so when when we were talking to Jared Kushner about this, we asked him sort of how
18:13does Trump's election or at the time when we spoke to him was before the election occurred,
18:18how does the race sort of impact?
18:19And he said, you know, if Trump wasn't running, I'd have like I'd be able to say a very clear
18:24plan for the next five to 10 years.
18:28But you know, obviously, with Trump's election, that that could, you know, increase or decrease
18:35scrutiny.
18:36It's likely obviously that Trump coming into government will increase scrutiny on affinity.
18:42Jared has said that he and his wife Ivanka, who is obviously Trump's daughter, won't have
18:46any role in the administration, but obviously he will remain a sort of trusted partner to
18:51his father in law.
18:52He and Ivanka were present at Mar-a-Lago on election night.
18:56And it's been reported that Jared also has close relationships with various people who
19:01are running Trump's campaign and who might not be in the incoming administration.
19:05And so he will, you know, according to experts we spoke to and from what's been reported,
19:09likely be a sort of sounding board as well without a formal role.
19:13And so that will increase scrutiny on affinity in terms of whether a Trump policy could help
19:20or benefit affinity.
19:22But obviously, given the Republican control of government, there will likely not be any
19:27sort of investigation incoming.
19:28Well, on the flip side, right, a Harris administration victory would have reduced the scrutiny because
19:33there would have been less, you know, reason to look into affinity perhaps, but potentially
19:38more of a likelihood of an investigation.
19:42Now we don't have that.
19:43And then in terms of how it could benefit affinity or not, you know, we think, and we
19:49said as much in the piece, that regardless of who won the election, Jared Kushner is
19:54likely to become a billionaire soon, given sort of the firm's growth and investments.
20:00And according to experts we spoke to, an election victory for Trump, which is obviously what
20:07would be likely to benefit affinity probably a bit more, given that if we're looking at
20:14the reasons why the Saudis, Qataris, et cetera, invested in affinity in the first place, there
20:19was various theories.
20:20Jared Kushner said it's because obviously he had built a relationship with them and
20:23they believe in him and his ability to make these kinds of investments and make successful
20:27investments and generate successful returns.
20:30He said it's a returns business and he's confident they'll generate good returns.
20:34Right. And even though, you know, he hasn't done that in the past, they have seen him,
20:38he was saying, be successful in these other areas.
20:40So they're ready to bet on kind of Jared the man.
20:42Exactly.
20:43But it is obviously also a question of, according to some other experts we spoke to, of, you
20:49know, whether this could have been a bet on, you know, a bet on Trump returning to office,
20:56which, you know, at the time, at the time the firm was founded, it was right after January
21:006th.
21:01So obviously it was a time when many people thought that Trump was sort of dead in the
21:04water politically before he came back.
21:06Now obviously he's won re-election.
21:08And even if Trump never returned to politics, I think it was very clear that Jared himself
21:13would still be a powerful, you know, political and economic figure in his own right.
21:18You know, he, his time in the White House only made him more of a kind of national power
21:21broker.
21:22And so now that Trump is back in office, there's sort of a return to, you know, potentially
21:31a return to the Trump administration's.
21:34The first Trump administration's policies towards the Middle East.
21:36So a priority at the time was a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which
21:41ultimately didn't materialize and has been obviously made much more difficult by the
21:46war in Gaza and the Middle East.
21:48That's occurred since then.
21:50But if the Trump administration were to pursue closer engagement again between these Gulf
21:54powers and Israel, that would seem to be a positive for affinity, which is pursuing those
22:03kinds of investments and is backed by those, by those sovereign wealth funds largely, right?
22:08There's other investors, but largely by those.
22:10And so when we're, when we're going back to talking about, you know, will affinity raise
22:15more funds, which we don't know if they will.
22:20From the reporting that we did, it seems that it's, it's more likely that there would be
22:23an incentive for affinities backers to want to reinvest given that, you know, Trump will
22:30be returning and potentially pursuing these policies that, that, you know, in the first
22:36place when, when Jared is working on them in the first administration enabled him to
22:40set up this firm.
22:41Right.
22:42And so obviously it's too soon to say the Trump administration hasn't, you know, hasn't
22:47been inaugurated yet.
22:49And it's unclear whether it will pursue the same policies that they did with the Middle
22:53East that they did the first time around and whether they're even possible, right?
22:57That region has changed a lot since 2017 and 2021, obviously.
23:04But broadly speaking, we think that it's likely to benefit affinity, making it more likely
23:11that it can, it can potentially raise more funds if Jared chooses to.
23:15And that there could be policies that might be beneficial to its goal of increasing the
23:19economic ties between the Gulf and Israel and the Gulf and the US.
23:24So he's likely to become a billionaire regardless.
23:27But we think that it might make it more, might make it more likely that he gets there sooner
23:33rather than later.
23:34Right.
23:35Right, right, right.
23:36Well, thank you so much for coming in today to talk about this.
23:40It was a pleasure reporting on it with you.
23:41Yeah, it was great to be here and reporting on it with you too.
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