You may ignore the wild news coming out of the UK lately, but it’s actually quite the stuff, especially with regards to the country’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, whose background has surprisingly deep American ties.
I’ll get to those Sunak goodies in a second, but first I’m going to talk about the bond between America and England. France or Israel may think they have a special relationship with the United States – but they are fighting for second place. We had relations with England as far back as the ill-fated colony of Virginia in 1584 and over the next five centuries no country was closer.
Winston Churchill described the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom as “special” in 1946 Speech in Fulton, Missouri With President Harry Truman. True, we have a few differences: cold beer vs. warm beer, color vs. color, and soccer vs. soccer. But we have a lot in common. The United States and the United Kingdom share a love for the British royal family and an amazing mix of cultures when it comes to rock, fashion and television.
Economic relations between the world’s first and sixth economies – after India, Germany, Japan and China – also play a crucial role. according to The website of the US Embassy in the United Kingdom.
It’s about more than that, says Wall Street investor Ann Berry, a Briton with an MBA from Harvard University. She points out that the United States needs all the allies it can have given the tensions with Russia, Saudi Arabia and China.
She said, “A historical ally has become more important in the modern world, because global loyalties are becoming less transparent, more fleeting, more transactional. I think the United Kingdom is still a friend of the United States, and I think it will remain a friend of ours. And it’s still an interpreter on this side of the ocean.” Atlantic when it comes to figuring out how to play in Europe.”
The UK is facing major economic problems, some of which are due to Global imbalances in demand over supplySome are due to circumstances specific to the UK, and some stem from Brexit, or leaving the European Union, for nearly two years now. resulted in Multinational corporations are moving their European headquarters out of LondonAnd the labor shortage and commercial friction. A stronger dollar and higher energy prices are causing more pain.
This turbulent economy lies in the lap of the new British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, the leader of the Conservative Party, who has been in power for 12 years. He is taking charge of Liz Truss, whose difficult tenure as Britain’s prime minister ended after just six weeks amid heavy market volatility.
Sunak’s financial expertise should prove invaluable in this new role, and the markets have already stabilized. In addition to his connections to the financial world, the new prime minister also has deep connections to the United States
The new prime minister is a man of many firsts. At 42, he is the youngest Prime Minister since William Pitt (the Younger), who took office in 1783 at the age of 24. Sunak, born in the United Kingdom, is the first Prime Minister of Indian origin. He is also the first former hedge fund CEO, the first to earn an MBA from Stanford University, and the first to work for Goldman Sachs.
Let’s take a closer look at some of those American links. After graduating from Oxford in 2001, Richie joined Goldman Bank in London as an analyst, where he sat for some time alongside the aforementioned Anne Berry.
“He was very intelligent, analytical, very eloquent, and a really fun personality,” she says. “He was very focused, even at the time, on making sure he was doing something that had a broader impact.”
Sunak left Goldman and went to Stanford on a Fulbright scholarship where he earned an MBA in 2006. There is some color in his days at Stanford in Sunak’s biography published in 2020 (How many 40-year-olds guarantee that?) titled (one hopes to hope) not literally) “going to break” Written by Lord Michael Ashcroft, a 76-year-old billionaire businessman and Tory politician. Ashcroft writes that Silicon Valley fascinated Sunak, and that he once commented on how it was possible to take a 10-minute drive through the Bay Area and bypass hundreds of lives-altering businesses.
The book talks about Stanford’s ruthlessness, and one of his classmates, Maria Angiano, told the author, “My feathers have coped very well. He was always very positive.” Another student there at the time, Rashad Bartholomew, remembers partying seriously, but noted that Snack didn’t drink but occasionally joined in some low-stakes poker games.
After graduating from Stanford University Business School, Sunak worked for hedge funds in London including the Children’s Investment Fund (commonly known as TCI), run by British billionaire Chris Hoon, described to me as “a wonderful man and a huge risk”, by a British manager hedge fund At one point, Hon was making an active investment that included targeting the American railroad CSX, which it tracks Its origins are to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (or B&O), the oldest in the United States. The stake in CSX ended up becoming a tangled relationship and ended badly for TCI. Sunak invested in CSX and His role in litigation was mentioned.
Al-Sinak is very wealthy, the bulk of which comes from his wife, Akshata Murthia Claremont McKenna graduate, whom he met at Stanford, and the daughter of the billionaire founder of Infosys, Narayana Murthy. Akshatta 93% of Infosys is worth about $700 million, according to India’s Business Today magazine. Infosys’ primary business was Outsourcing Thousands of American Jobs to India, or replace jobs in the United States with foreign nationals. And she did it over and over again I knocked heads with the American organizers.
But wait – there’s more Americana through the Murthys. Through the Akshata and her family business, Sunak also has relationships with the companies that operate Wendy’s in India and a joint venture with Amazon in India, according to An investigation by the Guardian.
Finally, your age even He had a US green card Sometime, according to the BBC. still has Luxurious apartment in Santa MonicaThe Guardian reports.
The point I make is that Sunak’s connections to America are as important and unique as Britain itself, and in fact reflect the changing nature of our relationship with England.
Think of it this way: in the nineteenth century, our ties were mostly commercial, perhaps best symbolized by the Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish-born American steel baron best known for his charitable work in the American and British Empire. In the twentieth century, our military alliance with the United Kingdom was of paramount importance, and Winston Churchill, so beloved by Americans, was (reciprocated somewhat) as a symbol of that association. And now in the twenty-first century, with the rise of finance, from Better Than Sunak, the former Wall Street man with an American MBA, to be the latest representation of Anglo-Americanism.
Rishi Sunak: British/American like steak and kidney – and apple – pie.
This article appeared in the Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on October 29. Get your morning feed sent straight to your inbox every Monday through Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscription
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