A big theme in finance over the past two decades has been a shift in power away from investment banks that traditionally dominated the industry to the asset management firms that orbit it. Now, that’s reflected in the seat of government, too. By picking Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary, Donald Trump has chosen a Wall Street type who hasn’t held a senior position at a Wall Street firm.
Bessent isn’t the first hedge fund manager to take on the role of Treasury secretary; that honor went to Steven Mnuchin in 2017. But while Mnuchin spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. before setting up a fund – which he ran only briefly – Bessent has been an investment manager his entire career. Eschewing traditional Wall Street firms, he joined Brown Brothers Harriman after Yale University – one of only a few in the early 1980s to hire graduates straight into investment management – and has remained in the industry since.
