As the great magician Harry Houdini once said: “The secret of showmanship is not what you really do, but what a mystical public thinks you do.” Entrepreneurial peddler Vivek Lamarr Vivek Ramaswamy has grown from corporate governance court jester to serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination about 5% of Republican primary voters said they were intrigued by his antics.
As one of the few people who has debated Ramaswamy in multiple public appearances and researched the veracity of his business resume, by exposing his Ramaswamy hype and dumping the reality of the business playbook, Multiple times dismissed the distracting smoke he created. Now Ramaswamy appears to be remaking it for politics.
I always knew ramaswamy He’ll excel in the debate arena because he’ll surround himself with more experienced opponents who are more likely to be based on facts and dignity. Seeking attention is at the heart of Ramaswamy’s strategy. He will thrive on it—whether the attention is positive or negative.
Two years ago, as an alumnus of Harvard and Yale Law School, Ramaswamy, through mutual friends, desperately begged me to debate him on campus to promote his book attacking ESG practices in business. Even so, he has shown serious interest in running for president as the Republican nominee by leveraging his brand of anti-awakening, according to emails in my possession.
He claims he’s attracted to me because Three back-to-back works I recently wrote a defense essay business leaders He’s taken a courageous stand on corporate social impact, showing that doing good for shareholders doesn’t have to come at the expense of doing good for society. In fact, I demonstrate the importance of social harmony to strengthen the trust that free markets need to thrive.
He wanted to argue and I declined. However, I couldn’t avoid him for long when he entered cable TV with charisma, and a year later, CNBC Contributor, I had my first live debate with him. The heated debate sparked viral comments on Twitter. Outraged MAGA sympathizers were thrilled by his combative behavior, while CEOs were relieved that someone knew how to respond to him. Offstage he was charming and courteous. In email and Twitter exchanges, he was provocative, trying to lure me into endless feuds.
A year later, last December, before the national convention, he managed to do so in another forum. association of attorneys general. At the time, he was still honing his debating skills: making an outrageous claim (the injustice of the SEC following any EPA guidelines on toxic emissions), finding an irrelevant point where it could be applied (a mysterious microchemical substance, the rulemaking may need to be revised) ), which is then rewritten as a condemnation of all regulation. If you go down that rabbit hole with him, you’re stuck — unless you’re a professional chemist ready to provide the full background.
Just this weekend, he used the trick with CNN’s Dana Bash, who deftly led him to label him “fringe review” His own shameful attacks on black congressional leaders. When Bash asked him about his claim that scientifically documented climate change is a hoax, he said that those who warned us about global warming had also warned of impending ice ages in the past — as if they were contradicting themselves now.
Of course, this is nonsense, because the future ice age will be one of the results of global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, because nasa confirmed. Bash then had to take a break to let Ramaswamy’s smug trap replies and misinformation go unchallenged.
Last year, Ramaswamy wrote an anti-awakening article Leave a comment on The Economist respond to my own The Economist’s Articles on the Corporate Society affect while Aggressively outreach to the media with absurd attacks on 1,000+ outlets Ever since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, I’ve helped encourage companies that quit Russia and have been harshly critical attack me on twitter for no reason.
Earlier this year, after I exposed the shady business record of his blatant pump and dump scheme, his campaign staff strangely threatened me with emails, phone calls, and Twitter taunts, interspersed with some provably false remarks. As we have revealed before, here are the facts of Ramaswamy’s business records, which Ramaswamy inadvertently confirmed to us, revealing his talent as a magician.
Ramaswamy’s tax records show first His big money came when he hyped an Alzheimer’s drug candidate, Axovant, which has been jettisoned by other pharmaceutical companies. Axovant, which is 78% owned by Ramaswamy’s corporate holding company Roivant, exploded after failing FDA tests, sending shares plunging from $200 to 40 cents, with thousands of retail investors who bought on the hype suffering losses . Ramaswamy himself reaped handsome profits (even if it took Ramaswamy’s campaign a while to admit the truth).
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Ramaswamy, first told us that “the idea that Vivek made money off of[Axovant’s]failure is a complete lie,” before finally admitting that Ramaswamy did cash in, And claimed that “(Ramaswamy) and other shareholders were forced to sell a small portion of their shares”. In 2015, they sold some of their shares to allow outside investors to enter Roivant. ’ The fact is that Ramaswamy’s own tax He promptly sold nearly $40 million in Roivant stock, reports show The stock came about when Axovant’s hype was at its peak. Meanwhile, Roivant raised $500 million in funding, largely driven by Axovant. As Ramaswamy was busy selling his personal stake, Roivant gradually reduced and diluted its Axovant stake, from 78% to just 25%.
Apparently, it turns out that Ramaswamy’s words and deeds have been mixed, busy cashing out while shamelessly hyping Axovant’s prospects in media interviews — almost like a classic pump-and-dump scheme.Some $40 million personal windfall Not “small” at all. Ramaswamy was not “forced to sell” as it was clearly a personal choice and no one had a gun to his head. Amazingly, Ramaswamy’s spokesperson further confirmed to us that Ramaswamy knew that 99.7% of all Alzheimer’s drugs tested failed despite his constant hype about Axovant chances of success without saying a word about this inconvenient fact.
Likewise, Ramaswamy reduced his stake in Roivant Sciences in 2020, and his tax returns show he made nearly $200 million in a sweet deal with Sumitomo Corporation just as the company sold its shares through a SPAC. Its valuation has quintupled since the push to go public. Meanwhile, Ramaswamy’s pharmaceutical companies are behaving like patent trolls, Suing Pfizer and Moderna on an ongoing basis and bizarrely claiming to have their mRNA COVID vaccine. Ramaswamy’s campaign claims Ramaswamy helped develop countless new drugs, but Roivant’s own SEC filings show The company has only commercialized one drug, the little-known skin-care drug VTAMA.
Ramaswamy’s Most Profitable Stock Investing When he was at QVT Investments (including Pharmasset and Inhibitex), he had the same fundamental attribute of buying stocks ahead of M&A, with great timing.
Notably, convicted “pharmaceutical brother” Martin Shkreli first rose to fame when he jacked up the price by 5,000% of a 62-year-old life-saving drug commonly used by HIV and malaria patients above, and then jailed for securities.Fraud has Calls Ramaswamy a “friend” Also one of his “biggest investors”. (The presidential candidate said that was while he was an investment analyst at QVT Financial.)
Another of Ramaswamy’s businesses, Strive Asset Management, is more of a fantasy.Assets under management have stagnated as firms have shrunk begging for consulting contracts from state government politiciansan obvious conflict of interest Given Ramaswamy’s political activities. Strive has some of the highest fees among its peers and is facing multiple lawsuits from former employees They said they were under intense pressure, violated securities laws, and that Ramaswamy routinely exaggerated his firm’s capabilities.
Interestingly, while he attacks ESG hiring priorities in the name of meritocracy, he happily configures his corporate leadership (hiring his people) through cronyism. high school friend as the president of a company) and nepotism (hiring his brother and Mother help lead another company).
Ramaswamy claimed he had “no money” to go to law school and was awarded a Soros Scholarship. However, his tax returns show that his earnings were apparently multiples. million dollars as an investment analyst while still a full-time student— Reportedly, before paying Wikipedia editors Remove all references to Soros.
Likewise, Ramaswamy boasted of building a successful multimillion-dollar business as an undergraduate while working part-time as a copycat rapper with eminem lyrics. However, he apparently sold the company for only a few thousand dollars, according to his tax returns.
The opportunistic, double-Ivy League student of well-educated career parents was so eager to be recast as a populist that he sued davos The World Economic Forum removed him from its list of participants.
after cnn anchor Kaitlan Collins He called her “a wayward teen” after exposing his lies denying disgraceful claims about 9/11.
Obviously, he couldn’t accept the fact. Hopefully Ramaswamy’s Republican rivals and political journalists will avoid his diversionary tactics and focus instead on the truth.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Lester Crown Professor of Management Practice and Senior Associate Dean at the Yale School of Management. He was named “Management Professor of the Year” by Poets & Quants magazine.
The opinions expressed in Fortune review articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and beliefs of: wealth.
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