14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s former CEO is reported to have bought a 20 percent stake in New York-based hedge fund D.E. Shaw, the global investment management company which has made investments in technology, wind power, real estate, and financial services firms.
Although an exact prize was not disclosed in the official press release, it was estimated that the Google billionaire might have paid around $500 million (€ 459 million) and that the stake was acquired using his family’s investment group, Hillspire LLC.
There have been other attempts of buying the stake
The sum was estimated based on previous reports from the Wall Street Journal, which revealed that last year a Boston firm had intended to buy the stake in question for the same amount.
The share that the former Google executive managed to get his hands on one belonged to the Lehman Brothers Holdings, which went bankrupt back in 2008 after a severe financial crisis.
Schmidt’s net worth is estimated somewhere at around $9 billion (€ 8.26 billion).
It seems that Lehman had refused the offers coming from any other firms interested in buying the stake due to the fact that they did not agree with the passive role that they had put forward and because the firms had expressed their intention to alter the terms of the deal.
However, Bloomberg revealed that Schmidt has no intentions of performing any changes within the firm’s management, and although he has not given many details about the terms of the acquisition, he did declare that he is "excited to invest in an enterprise that has so successfully used technology to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns across asset classes globally."
D.E Shaw, the founder of the company, has also expressed his approval of Schmidt’s joining in, saying that he fits perfectly with the investment firm’s ideals and beliefs.