Elliott Management, Activist Investor, Buys a Stake in Salesforce
Washington will be losing a communicator. Mr. Klain is reportedly always on and available to talk, whether with people on Wall Street; in the wee hours on the phone with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; or over a glass of wine on the houseboat of Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia.
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Mr. Klain has deep connections throughout Washington: He previously served as chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore; worked as a lobbyist at the law firm O’Melveny Myers, for clients like Cigna, Fannie Mae, Time Warner and US Airways; and worked at Revolution LLC, a tech investment firm started by Steve Case, the billionaire co-founder of AOL
Mr. Klain has been one of Biden’s primary negotiators. He has been a reliable interlocutor in fraught times, said Chris Lehane of the crypto investment firm Haun Ventures, who worked for Mr. Klain when he was chief of staff to Gore. “One of the things on the business side people always worry about, or think about, is, ‘Who is in the room that matters when big things are going down?’”
With Mr. Klain, Corporate America knew that someone very high up “would ask the right questions and consider all the issues,” Mr. Lehane told DealBook, likening the role of chief of staff to that of “C.O.O. of the federal government.” (Republicans called Klain “Prime Minister Klain.”)
Crypto’s spreading collapse
Traditional financial institutions are cooling on crypto. Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, said yesterday that one of its partners, Signature Bank, was reducing its exposure to digital assets and would only handle dollar transactions for customers of the company worth more than $100,000.
Regulators have warned banks about “safety and soundness.” The Fed, the F.D.I.C. and Office of the Comptroller of Currency issued a joint statement this month outlining the risks for institutions handling crypto. These included fraud, potential runs on assets and contagion.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/business/elliott-salesforce-benioff.html