Hedge Fund Billionaire Gets Billions More to Retire

One former co-chief executive, Eileen Murray, sued the firm for discrimination after she left in 2020, a matter later settled out of court. She had shared the role with David McCormick, who resigned a little over a year ago to run the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for the Senate, which he lost.

All the while, Mr. Dalio sent mixed signals on whether he would stay or go, telling staff and investors that he would leave only when he was certain that the right leadership was in place.

In mid-2018, Bridgewater said it would become a partnership as part of a long-term plan to move away from founder control. In theory, that should have transformed the firm into an entity controlled by its top employees rather than one man.

But Mr. Dalio wasted little time in telling colleagues that he was not interested in a simple passing of the baton, according to current and former employees. He approached dozens of top employees — at the time, Bridgewater had roughly 1,500 full-time staff members — and told them they would have to buy his shares with their own money, some of those employees said.

Mr. Dalio offered to arrange 10-year loans to those who lacked the funds to buy him out, according to two former employees. If they declined, he intimated that they should consider leaving the firm, they said. Still, even as he sold shares to his colleagues, decreasing his ownership, his founder shares kept him in control.

Mr. Dalio didn’t recede from public view either, often attracting criticism.

In a CNBC interview in the fall of 2021, Mr. Dalio dismissed concerns about China’s human rights track record, likening the country’s government to a “strict parent.” (Bridgewater manages billions of dollars for companies partly owned by the Chinese government.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/business/bridgewater-ray-dalio-retire.html