Philanthropy and Politics: A Tale of Two Billionaires

Gregory Zuckerman is a special writer at the Wall Street Journal and the author of five books, including his most recent, The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution.  Greg joined the Journal in 1996 and writes about big financial trades, firms, and personalities.  He’s a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism, and his work has included breaking the stories of the discord between Bill Gross and PIMCO, the London Whale trade, subprime mortgage collapse, and meltdown of hedge fund Amaranth in 2007. Our conversation starts with Greg’s path to journalism, touches on the aftermath of his book The Greatest Trade Ever about John Paulson and the subprime meltdown. We then turn to his recent tome on Jim Simons and Renaissance, including the formation and evolution of the Medallion fund, precarious moments in its history, the human element of a quant shop, differences between Renaissance and other quant competitors, leadership, impacting the world with vast wealth, and why Renaissance has been so special.

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