Vivek Ramaswamy, the fast-talking, Ivy League-educated, telegenic political phenom thrills Republican voters, infuriates his presidential primary opponents and styles himself as an entrepreneurial “scientist” with a glittering business background and hundreds of millions of dollars to dump into his out-of-nowhere campaign for the White House.
But a review of Ramaswamy’s career – marked by the hyping of a failed Alzheimer’s drug, giant payouts when other investors got burned, lawsuits alleging pressure to break securities laws and more – reveals a businessperson whose true liquid net worth is unknown and whose track record as a successful entrepreneur shows limited value creation for anyone other than himself.
In his book, “Woke, Inc,” Ramaswamy writes positively of notorious “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who went to prison for securities fraud and whose business model included acquiring the patents to drugs and then jacking up the price by enormous amounts. Shkreli was released from federal prison last May.
“What was Martin Shkreli really guilty of?,” Ramaswamy asks in the book. “Why did the DOJ go after him so hard, when it lets others quietly get away with much worse?” Ramaswamy was also at times critical of Shkreli in the book and in subsequent interviews.
Ramaswamy and his asset-management firm Strive, which seeks to push back against so-called “woke” investing that takes into account a company’s governance structure as well as its record on environmental and social justice issues, is also under legal threat.
The firm, which just surpassed $1 billion in total assets spread across multiple Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), is facing a suit from an employee who claims she was pressured to violate securities laws. The employee, Joyce Rosely of New Jersey, contends that Ramaswamy directed her to “violate applicable securities laws and participate in the decision to terminate [Rosely] when she refused to participate.”
McLaughlin of the Ramaswamy campaign dismisses the suits as “total and complete nonsense from an aggrieved under-performer who was fired.”
