Scott Bessent, the billionaire hedge fund manager whom President-elect Donald J. Trump picked to be his Treasury secretary, plans to divest from dozens of funds, trusts and investments in preparation to become the nation’s top economic policymaker.
Those plans were released on Saturday along with the publication of an ethics agreement and financial disclosures that Mr. Bessent submitted ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing next Thursday.
The documents show the extent of the wealth of Mr. Bessent, whose assets and investments appear to be worth in excess of $700 million. Mr. Bessent was formerly the top investor for the billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros and has been a major Republican donor and adviser to Mr. Trump.
If confirmed as Treasury secretary, Mr. Bessent, 62, will steer Mr. Trump’s economic agenda of cutting taxes, rolling back regulations and imposing tariffs as he seeks to renegotiate trade deals. He will also play a central role in the Trump administration’s expected embrace of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Although Mr. Trump won the election by appealing to working-class voters who have been dogged by high prices, he has turned to wealthy Wall Street investors such as Mr. Bessent and Howard Lutnick, a billionaire banker whom he tapped to be commerce secretary, to lead his economic team.
In a letter to the Treasury Department’s ethics office, Mr. Bessent outlined the steps he would take to “avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest in the event that I am confirmed for the position of secretary of the Department of Treasury.”
Mr. Bessent said he would shutter Key Square Capital Management, the investment firm that he founded, and resign from his Bessent-Freeman Family Foundation and from Rockefeller University, where he has been chairman of the investment committee.
The financial disclosure form, which provides ranges for the value of his assets, reveals that Mr. Bessent owns as much as $25 million of farmland in North Dakota, which earns an income from soybean and corn production. He also owns a property in the Bahamas that is worth as much as $25 million.
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