Page 18 - Bloomberg Businessweek-October 29, 2018

Bloomberg Businessweek October 29, 2018

“He played me like a Steinway piano”

blockade, had more influence with Trump. In November, MBS who attended the first Future Investment Initiative confer-
detained Alwaleed, Barrack’s onetime Saudi investing partner, ence in 2017, backed out a few days before the gathering. He
in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton for three months in a crackdown tar- made his move after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin,
geting political rivals. with whom he’d been scheduled to appear on a panel, said
Former employees who worked with Barrack in the Middle he wouldn’t attend.
East say he miscalculated. Being a Western dealmaker in Saudi
Arabia was once a rare thing. Now the kingdom has rela- For all of the loyalty and largesse Barrack bestowed on
tionships across Wall Street—including with Schwarzman’s Trump since the campaign began, the Colony founder has got-
Blackstone, with which it committed to invest $20 billion in ten little in return. Friends say he expressed interest in being
2017. Gulf royals, the former employees point out, tend not to named a presidential envoy to the Middle East, which would
like dealing with middlemen, which is what Barrack became have given him a broad mandate to shape policy. Instead,
when he helped secure access to the Trump administration. he was handed the inaugural committee—a job he likened to
(Barrack never insisted on “being kept in the loop, being the being a wedding planner, according to two people who say
middleman,” Blicksilver said.) In Kushner, MBS found his own they heard the remark.
princeling in the White House. Barrack’s ties to the campaign may come back to haunt
While the Qataris haven’t said a negative word about him. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation inched
Barrack in public, and their U.S.-based representatives say closer to Barrack’s orbit with Manafort’s and Gates’s guilty
they won’t, the royal family has looked to other administra- pleas. Sam Patten, another Manafort associate, admitted to
tion officials for support and hired opposition researchers helping a Ukrainian oligarch disguise a $50,000 contribution 61
who are looking into Barrack’s dealings with Saudi Arabia and to the inaugural committee in exchange for tickets. Three peo-
the U.A.E., according to three people familiar with the mat- ple close to Barrack say the committee didn’t have the tools
ter. Barrack still speaks with HBJ on a regular basis, Barrack’s to vet donors and that Barrack had no way of knowing the
friends say, and Blicksilver said his relationship with the Qatari provenance of the funds. Barrack, who submitted to an inter-
royal family remains unchanged. view by Mueller’s staff, “did so voluntarily, without a proffer
Barrack helped arrange an April 2018 meeting between or other agreement,” according to Blicksilver. Barrack hasn’t
Trump and Qatar’s new emir, 38-year-old Tamim bin Hamad been accused of wrongdoing.
Al Thani, to whom Barrack had sold the Paris Saint-Germain While Barrack’s be-nice-to-all style might be out of vogue in
soccer club in 2012. For Qatar, it represented a welcome, if the era of Trump and MBS, friends say not to count him out.
belated, softening of the president’s stance. A month later, Figueras, the polo player, sees no sign that Colony’s reversal of
Barrack flew to Doha to meet with Tamim and talk invest- fortune is weighing on him. “He never complains about any-
ments, according to one person familiar with the meeting. No thing,” Figueras says, adding that Barrack has told him he’ll
deals have been announced. On the other side of the blockade, be spending more time in South America. Colony is negotiat-
Abu Dhabi bought a $70 million stake in a Los Angeles office ing a deal to obtain the Latin American business of the Abraaj
tower partly owned by Colony, and the firm teamed up with Group, a failing Dubai-based investment firm. Barrack has also
the Saudi wealth fund to buy assets from France’s Accor SA. raised $4 billion for a new Colony fund to invest in digital infra-
But Colony had owned a stake in Accor for years, so it hardly structure such as cell towers and data centers.
counts as new business. Late last year, Barrack started spending more time
As for Saudi Arabia, there may not be many more deals on in Colony’s offices and fewer hours on TV. He’s looking
offer. In August the kingdom postponed the public offering for for opportunities to sell assets while boosting the fund
Aramco, raising questions about how much investment will management business. His relationships with sovereign
be coming from the country. MBS has become a toxic figure, wealth funds will be key.
tarnished by the October death of Saudi journalist and royal “I am 100 percent focused,” Barrack told investors in
family critic Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in March. “I am still one of the largest personal sharehold-
Istanbul. Saudi Arabia has denied MBS’s involvement; nev- ers in this company, it’s the majority of my personal net
ertheless, executives including Schwarzman and JPMorgan worth, it’s the dominant factor in my and my family’s pride,
Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon, as well as the CEOs of Uber, reputation, and future, and I don’t intend to leave it tainted
Viacom, and HP, pulled out of this year’s Future Investment or unattended.” <BW> �With Shannon Pettypiece, Heather
Initiative conference, held the last week of October. Barrack, Perlberg, and Mohammed Aly Sergie