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Wilbur Ross

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Financier

The Resume

    (November 28, 1937- )
    Born in Weehawken, New Jersey
    Former employee of N M Rothschild & Sons
    Formed the equity fund WL Ross & Co (2000)
    Nominated for Secretary of Commerce by Donald Trump
    Confirmed by the Senate (February 27, 2017)
    At 79, was oldest first-time cabinet appointee in US history

Why he might be annoying:

    He agreed to pay a $2.3 million fine and reimburse investors $11.8 million to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into overcharging of fees by WL Ross & Co (2016).
    He informed the Government Ethics Office that he had divested himself of his financial holdings, when he had actually put many of them into a trust fund for his family (2017).
    During a trip with Trump to Saudi Arabia (May, 2017), he praised the lack of protestors, apparently unaware that the Saudi government had banned public demonstrations in 2011.
    The leaked Paradise Papers showed that he had failed to disclose at his confirmation hearings his investments in a Russian company that had been sanctioned for its ties to Vladimir Putin’s family and Russian oligarchs (November, 2017).
    ’Forbes’ reported allegations that he may have siphoned off as much as $120 million from business partners and funds under his management (2018).
    During the government shutdown, he said he did not ‘quite understand why’ federal workers who had gone without pay were going to food banks (January 24, 2019).
    He has a tendency to fall asleep during cabinet meetings, with one former administration official quipping, ‘Wilbur is good until about 11 AM.’

Why he might not be annoying:

    He helped broker the deal between Trump and his creditors that let Trump keep control of his casinos.
    He was nicknamed ‘the King of Bankruptcy’ for buying bankrupt companies and selling them at a hefty profit after operations improved.
    He was praised by the president of the United Steelworkers union for thousands of jobs by reorganizing several bankrupt steel companies into the International Steel Group (2002).
    He received the Order of Industrial Service Merit medal from South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung for his assistance during the 1998 Korean financial crisis.
    He received the medal of the Order of the Rising Sun for promoting stronger US-Japanese relations and for his relief efforts after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 6 Votes: 16.67% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 72 Votes: 58.33% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 50 Votes: 52.00% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 55 Votes: 56.36% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 240 Votes: 54.58% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 141 Votes: 56.03% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 15 Votes: 80.0% Annoying