Robert Leroy Mercer (born July 11, 1946)
[ is an American hedge fund manager, computer scientist, and political donor. Mercer was an early ]artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
researcher and developer and is the former co-CEO of the hedge fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...
company Renaissance Technologies
Renaissance Technologies LLC, also known as RenTech or RenTec, is an American hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York, on Long Island, which specializes in systematic trading using quantitative models derived from mathematical and statisti ...
.
Mercer played a key role in the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union by donating data analytics
Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It ...
services to Nigel Farage
Nigel Paul Farage (; born 3 April 1964) is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party (renamed Reform UK in 2021) from 2 ...
. He has also been a major funder of organizations supporting right-wing political causes in the United States, such as ''Breitbart News
''Breitbart News Network'' (known commonly as ''Breitbart News'', ''Breitbart'', or ''Breitbart.com'') is an Radical right (United States), American far-rightMultiple sources:
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'', the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intellig ...
, and Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
's 2016 campaign for president. He is the principal benefactor of the Make America Number 1 super PAC.
In November 2017, Mercer announced he would step down from Renaissance Technologies
Renaissance Technologies LLC, also known as RenTech or RenTec, is an American hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York, on Long Island, which specializes in systematic trading using quantitative models derived from mathematical and statisti ...
and sell his stake in ''Breitbart News
''Breitbart News Network'' (known commonly as ''Breitbart News'', ''Breitbart'', or ''Breitbart.com'') is an Radical right (United States), American far-rightMultiple sources:
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* syndicated news, opinion, and commentary ...
'' to his daughters. He was the majority owner of SCL Group
SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories) was a private British behavioural research and strategic communication company that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving its subsidiaries ...
, a self-described "global elections management agency", before it was dissolved in 2018. In 2021, Mercer was involved in possibly the largest tax settlement in U.S. history, as he, James Simons
James Harris Simons (; born 25 April 1938) is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York. He and his ...
, and other executives at the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies were ordered to pay as much as $7 billion to the IRS in back taxes.
Early life and education
Mercer grew up in New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Tiguex
, OfficialLang = None
, Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ...
. He developed an early interest in computers and in 1964 attended a National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia where he learned to program a donated IBM computer. He went on to get a bachelor's degree in physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
and mathematics from the University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
. While working on his degree he had a job at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base writing programs where, though he felt he produced good work, he felt it was not optimized. He later said the experience left him with a "jaundiced view" of government-funded research. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...
from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...
in 1972.
Career
Mercer joined IBM Research
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research or ...
in the fall of 1972 and worked at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...
in Yorktown, New York
Yorktown is a town on the northern border of Westchester County, New York, United States. A suburb of the New York City metropolitan area, it is approximately north of midtown Manhattan. The population was 36,569 at the 2020 U.S. Census.
Histo ...
, where he helped develop Brown clustering, a statistical machine translation
Statistical machine translation (SMT) is a machine translation paradigm where translations are generated on the basis of statistical models whose parameters are derived from the analysis of bilingual text corpora. The statistical approach contras ...
technique, as part of a speech recognition
Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ...
and translation research program led by Frederick Jelinek
Frederick Jelinek (18 November 1932 – 14 September 2010) was a Czech-American researcher in information theory, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing. He is well known for his oft-quoted statement, "Every time I fir ...
and Lalit Bahl. In June 2014, Mercer received the Association for Computational Linguistics
The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) is a scientific and professional organization for people working on natural language processing. Its namesake conference is one of the primary high impact conferences for natural language proces ...
Lifetime Achievement Award for this work.
In 1993, Mercer joined hedge fund
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...
Renaissance Technologies
Renaissance Technologies LLC, also known as RenTech or RenTec, is an American hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York, on Long Island, which specializes in systematic trading using quantitative models derived from mathematical and statisti ...
after being recruited by executive Nick Patterson. The founder of Renaissance, James Harris Simons
James Harris Simons (; born 25 April 1938) is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York. He and his f ...
, a mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
, preferred to hire mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists rather than business school students or financial analysts. Mercer and a former colleague from IBM, Peter Brown, became co-CEOs of Renaissance when Simons retired in 2009.[ Renaissance's main fund, Medallion, earned 39% per year on average from 1989 to 2006.] A bipartisan Senate panel estimated in 2014 that Medallion investors underpaid their taxes by some $6.8 billion over more than a decade by masking short-term gains as long-term returns. As of 2014, Renaissance managed $25 billion in assets.[ In November 2017, Mercer announced that he would be stepping down from his position at Renaissance Technologies. The decision was taken after the hedge fund faced a backlash over Mercer's political activism.
Mercer appears in the ]Paradise Papers
The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper'' Süddeutsch ...
as a director of eight Bermuda companies, some of which appear to have been used to legally avoid US taxes.
Political activities and views
In 2015, ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' called Mercer one of the ten most influential billionaires
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busi ...
in politics. Since 2006, Mercer has donated about $34.9 million to Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
political campaigns in the US.
Mercer has given $750,000 to the Club for Growth
The Club for Growth is a 501(c)(4) conservative organization active in the United States, with an agenda focused on cutting taxes and other economic policy issues. Club for Growth's largest funders are the billionaires Jeff Yass and Richard U ...
, $2 million to American Crossroads
American Crossroads is a US Super PAC that raises funds from donors to advocate for certain candidates of the Republican Party. It has pioneered many of the new methods of fundraising opened up by the Supreme Court's ruling in ''Citizens United ...
, and $2.5 million to Freedom Partners Action Fund. In 2010, he financially supported fringe
Fringe may refer to:
Arts
* Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world's largest arts festival, known as "the Fringe"
* Adelaide Fringe, the world's second-largest annual arts festival
* Fringe theatre, a name for alternative theatre
* The Fringe, the ...
biochemist Art Robinson
Arthur Brouhard Robinson (born March 24, 1942) is an American biochemist, conservative activist, and politician, serving as Oregon State Senator from the 2nd District since 2021. He was the five-time Republican nominee for the United States H ...
's unsuccessful efforts to unseat Peter DeFazio
Peter Anthony DeFazio (; born May 27, 1947) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for , serving since 1987. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes Eugene, Springfield, Corvallis, Roseburg, Coos B ...
in Oregon's 44th congressional district. In the 2013-2014 election cycle, Mercer donated the fourth largest amount of money among individual donors and the second most among Republican donors.[
Mercer joined the ]Koch brothers
The Koch family ( ) is an American family engaged in business, best known for their political activities and their control of Koch Industries, the 2nd largest privately owned company in the United States (with 2019 revenues of $115 billion). ...
’ conservative political donor network after the 2010 ''Citizens United v. FEC
''Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission'', 558 U.S. 310 (2010), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance laws and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It wa ...
'', but Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, decided to establish their own political foundation. The Mercer Family Foundation, run by Rebekah, has donated to a variety of conservative causes.
Mercer has donated to the Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the preside ...
, the Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Ind ...
, the Media Research Center
The Media Research Center (MRC), formerly known as Culture and Media Institute (CMI), is an American conservative content analysis and media watchdog group based in Reston, Virginia, and founded in 1987 by L. Brent Bozell III.
The CMI promo ...
, Reclaim New York, GAI, and Citizens for Self-Governance
Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG) is a conservative American nonprofit political organization. In 2015, it launched a nationwide initiative calling for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution to reduce federal spendi ...
.[Zuckerman, Gregory, Keach Hagey, Scott Patterson and Rebecca Ballhaus]
"Meet the Mercers: A Quiet Tycoon and His Daughter Become Power Brokers in Trump’s Washington" (subscription)
''The Wall Street Journal'', January 8, 2017. Retrieved 2017-01-08. In 2013, Mercer was shown data by former Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1 ...
pollster Patrick Caddell
Patrick Hayward Caddell (May 19, 1950 – February 16, 2019) was an American public opinion pollster and a political film consultant who served in the Carter administration. He worked for Democratic presidential candidates George McGovern ...
, who has been critical of top Democrats, and commissioned more research from Caddell that showed "voters were becoming alienated from both political parties and mainstream candidates".[
Mercer was the main financial backer of the Jackson Hole Summit, a "shadow" conference (not to be confused with a similarly named Federal Reserve conference) that took place in Wyoming in August 2015 to advocate for the ]gold standard
A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from the l ...
.[ He has also supported Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, Fred Kelly Grant (an Idaho activist who encourages legal challenges to environmental laws), a campaign for the death penalty in Nebraska, and funded ads in New York critical of the so-called " ground-zero mosque".][ According to associates interviewed by Bloomberg, Mercer is concerned with the monetary and banking systems of the United States, which he believes are in danger from government meddling.][ Mercer is a major source of funds of '']Breitbart News
''Breitbart News Network'' (known commonly as ''Breitbart News'', ''Breitbart'', or ''Breitbart.com'') is an Radical right (United States), American far-rightMultiple sources:
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''. He gave at least $10 million to the media outlet, according to ''Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...
''.
In 2015 Mercer also gave $400,000 to Black Americans for a Better Future, a conservative think tank led by Raynard Jackson
Raynard Jackson is an American Republican Party (United States), Republican Political consulting, political consultant, lobbyist, and radio host based in Washington, D.C. He served on the presidential campaigns of George H. W. Bush and George W. ...
. Since 2017 Mercer has donated $87,100 to the same Super PAC.
Brexit
Mercer was an activist in the campaign
Campaign or The Campaign may refer to:
Types of campaigns
* Campaign, in agriculture, the period during which sugar beets are harvested and processed
*Advertising campaign, a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme
* Bl ...
for the United Kingdom to end its membership of the European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
, also known as Brexit
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC ...
. Andy Wigmore, communications director of Leave.EU
Leave.EU was a political campaign group that was first established to support the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, June 2016 referendum. Founded in July 2015 as ...
, said that Mercer donated the services of data analytics
Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It ...
firm Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica Ltd (CA), previously known as SCL USA, was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It was started in 2013, as a subsidiary of the private intellig ...
to Nigel Farage
Nigel Paul Farage (; born 3 April 1964) is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party (renamed Reform UK in 2021) from 2 ...
, the head of the United Kingdom Independence Party
The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), member ...
(UKIP). The firm was able to advise Leave.EU through its ability to harvest data from people's Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
profiles in order to target them with individualized persuasive messages to vote for Brexit.
It has been reported that Cambridge Analytica also has undisclosed links to Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ
AggregateIQ (AIQ) previously known as SCL Canada is a Canadian political consultancy and technology company, based in Victoria, British Columbia.
History
AIQ was founded in 2013 by Zack Massingham, a former university administrator and Jeff Si ...
, which also played a pivotal role in Dominic Cummings' VoteLeave campaign, where he delivered an estimated one billion individually curated targeted adverts to voters in the lead up to the Brexit
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC ...
referendum, in contravention of established voting rules. Neither VoteLeave nor Leave.EU informed the UK electoral commission of the donation despite the fact that a law demands that all donations valued over £7,500 must be reported. In 2018, the Electoral Commission found the VoteLeave campaign guilty of breaking electoral law.
2016 U.S. election
Mercer was one of the biggest donors in the 2016 U.S. elections, donating $22.5 million to Republican candidates and PACs. Mercer was a major financial supporter of the 2016 presidential campaign of Ted Cruz, contributing $11 million to a super PAC associated with the candidate.
Mercer was a major supporter of Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
's 2016 campaign for president. Mercer and his daughter Rebekah helped to obtain senior roles in the Trump campaign for Steve Bannon
Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. president Donald Trump during t ...
and Kellyanne Conway
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway (née Fitzpatrick; born January 20, 1967) is an American political consultant and pollster, who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previous ...
. Rebekah worked with Conway on the Cruz Super-PAC Keep the Promise in the 2016 Republican primaries
Presidential primaries and caucuses of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party took place within all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories between February 1 and June 7, 2016. These elections selected ...
.[ Mercer also financed a Super PAC, Make America Number One, which supported Trump's campaign.] Nick Patterson, a former colleague of Mercer's said in 2017 that Trump would not have been elected without Mercer's support.
Race relations
Mercer has said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark federal statute arising from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, was a major mistake. In 2017, David Magerman
David Mitchell Magerman (born 1968) is an American computer scientist and philanthropist. He spent 22 years working for an investment management company and hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies.
Early life and education
Magerman was born to Melv ...
, a former Renaissance employee, alleged in a lawsuit that Mercer had said that African Americans were economically better off before the civil rights movement, that white racists no longer existed in the United States, and that the only racists remaining were black racists.
In popular culture
Mercer was portrayed by actor Aden Gillett
John Aden Gillett is a British actor. He is best known for playing the role of Jack Maddox on the BBC series '' The House of Eliott''.
Biography and career
Gillet was born in the city of Aden, Yemen, from which he got his name. He attended ...
in the 2019 HBO and Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
produced drama entitled '' Brexit: The Uncivil War''.
Personal life
Mercer and his wife Diana Lynne Dean have three daughters: Jennifer ("Jenji"), Rebekah ("Bekah"), and Heather Sue. Rebekah runs the Mercer Family Foundation. The three Mercer daughters formerly owned a bakery called Ruby et Violette.
Mercer plays competitive poker and owns an HO scale
HO or H0 is a rail transport modelling scale using a 1:87 scale (3.5 mm to 1 foot). It is the most popular scale of model railway in the world. The rails are spaced apart for modelling standard gauge tracks and trains in HO. NMRA"Mo ...
model railroad.[ In 2009, Mercer filed suit against RailDreams Custom Model Railroad Design, alleging that RailDreams overcharged him by $2 million.]
Mercer lives at "Owl's Nest" mansion in Head of the Harbor, New York.[ He has commissioned a series of yachts, all named ''Sea Owl''. The most recent one is 203 feet (62 metres) in length, and has a pirate-themed playroom for Mercer's grandchildren and a chandelier of ]Venetian glass
Venetian glass () is glassware made in Venice, typically on the island of Murano near the city. Traditionally it is made with a soda–lime "metal" and is typically elaborately decorated, with various "hot" glass-forming techniques, as well as ...
.
In Florida, Mercer built a large stable and horse riding center. He has acquired one of the country's largest collections of machine guns and historical firearms, including a weapon Arnold Schwarzenegger wielded in '' The Terminator''.[
In 2013, Mercer was sued by several members of his household staff, who accused him of docking their wages and failing to pay overtime compensation.] The lawsuit was settled, according to a lawyer who represented the staff members.[
Mercer's net worth is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars, and he is often referred to as a billionaire.]
References
External links
* Mider, Zachary (2018 March 28).
Robert Mercer’s Secret Adventure as a New Mexico Cop.
''Bloomberg Businessweek.''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mercer, Robert
1948 births
Living people
People from Smithtown, New York
Businesspeople from New York (state)
Businesspeople from San Jose, California
New York (state) Republicans
IBM Research computer scientists
IBM employees
Grainger College of Engineering alumni
University of New Mexico alumni
Fellows of the Association for Computational Linguistics
American computer scientists
American political fundraisers
Scientists from New York (state)
People named in the Paradise Papers