by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
With the 4th of July holiday now behind us, it is time to look at two major events happening this month in the U.S.: The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the summer camp conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, where some of the most wealthy and influential people in the world meet each year at a private, invitation-only event where the Press is not allowed.
The Republican Convention will be mostly televised, where delegates are widely expected to choose Donald Trump to lead the party in the Fall elections, and where his Vice President choice will allegedly be revealed.
Which of these two events here in July will have the greatest impact on what happens during the national elections later this year, and the future of this country?
The Information technology publication spoke to some of this year’s invitees to the Sun Valley conference to get a taste of what is probably going to be at the top of their agenda this year, and that article is the focus of their Weekend publication that was just published on Friday.
Fear and Longing in Sun Valley
The most powerful moguls in tech and media gather annually at an Idaho summit where megadeals happen and the future gets rewritten. This year, their thoughts are dwelling on the promise and peril of both artificial intelligence and Donald Trump.
The summer gatherings of the alphas are upon us. This weekend, the annual running of the bulls will commence in Pamplona, Spain. And a couple days later, the media, tech and finance moguls of the world will begin descending in their private jets on Sun Valley, Idaho, for the annual confab hosted by Allen & Co., boutique investment bank.
While the chances are slim that they’ll rampage like bulls among Idaho’s whitebark pines and aspens, many of the moguls are still likely to be in a state of high agitation and excitement. The U.S. presidential election is lodged firmly at the top of their minds—even more deeply chiseled there after President Joe Biden’s belly flop in last week’s debate—according to a conversational survey The Information conducted of executives planning to attend the event.
Even attendees who are fretting about a possible second Donald Trump administration expect a lot of kibitzing about the prospect under him of a friendlier regulatory stance on corporate mergers and acquisition.
“I believe the world situation and politics will dominate,” Barry Diller, chair of IAC, said in an email.
Along with Diller, the boldface names pondering the future in the Idaho mountains next week are expected to include Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos, Walt Disney’s Bob Iger, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook, Paramount Global’s Shari Redstone, Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav and other Sun Valley veterans, according to multiple people who are attending.
Sam Altman of OpenAI, Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund and Varda Space Industries, Josh Kushner from Thrive Capital, Alexandr Wang from Scale AI, Max Levchin from Affirm, Anthony Wood of Roku and Dylan Field from Figma have also been invited, according to those people. Then there are folks like author Peter Attia, a favorite longevity guru among billionaires who has also become a favorite of the Allen & Co. crowd.
The guest list for this year’s Sun Valley conference offers another clue regarding the political themes likely to surface at the event.
Two leaders from higher education—Ben Sasse, president of the University of Florida, and Paul Alivisatos, president of the University of Chicago—are among the invitees, those invited say.
Both Alivisatos and Sasse, who is also a former U.S. Senator from Nebraska, have received attention for issuing statements earlier this year delineating what their universities considered free speech versus illegitimate forms of protest. The statements came amid the unrest that swept college campuses over the Gaza war.
The topics of Trump and Biden are likely to suck much of the oxygen out of the political discussions at the event, attendees predict. One Sun Valley regular who supports Biden was nevertheless critical of his administration’s approach to antitrust enforcement and said executives are likely to be buzzing about the prospect of renewed dealmaking under a second Trump administration.
“No one wants to do mergers or acquisitions because they’re all afraid,” this person said. “There’s no question that under a Trump administration you’re going to see more-vibrant M&A activity.” (Source.)
This is how the Billionaire Silicon Valley and Wall Street Globalists view national elections for President. Which one can they make more money from after they are in office?
Whether that candidate is “Left” or “Right” in their politics is of secondary importance, as long as they can continue making money and maintain their power base of control, which lies in the Business world, not in Washington D.C.
Last week’s Weekend publication by The Information also illustrated this principle.
Trump’s Young Man in Silicon Valley
Jacob Helberg, 34, has transformed himself from little-known tech world Democrat to a rising MAGA power broker without losing his ties to the left.
Soon after a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records last month, the former president headed uptown to a restaurant, where a dinner party awaited him.
Trump, who appeared unfazed by the conviction, walked in with a smile on his face, greeted by about 20 supporters and members of his innermost circle. The crowd included his son Eric, longtime ally and billionaire John Catsimatidis and a more recent addition to the crew, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg.
The group dined on a choice of steak or fish and threw out suggestions for vice president. It was at least the third time Helberg, who has donated $1 million to Trump’s campaign, had been in the same room with the candidate in the last several months.
“I believe that conviction was 100% political,” said Helberg, 34, when I met him at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, a week after the trial. (He declined to discuss the dinner’s details.)
In a presidential election year marked by stark division, Helberg has emerged from the sidelines of politics and tech as a rising GOP power broker with a rare ability to flow between different worlds—acting as a link between Silicon Valley and Washington while holding sway with liberals and conservatives alike. (Full article.)
I don’t think that there is any comparison to the Sun Valley Conference in terms of just how important that conference is to Americans and the economy, as well as who gets to decide who is “fit” to fill the role of President of the United States, as invitees are required to stay for the entire conference, as the host, the shadowy Allen & Co. investment firm, even provides lodging for these rich and powerful people to bring their families with them.
This annual conference has brokered some of the largest business deals ever made in Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
[I]t wouldn’t be shocking if some of the media and AI executives there end up hashing out agreements behind closed doors in between speaker sessions. After all, Sun Valley is known as a kind of Coachella for dealmaking.
Disney’s acquisition of ABC, AOL’s bid for Time Warner and Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post were all reportedly negotiated either in full or in part at the event.
All the dealmaking isn’t exactly a shock given who hosts the event: Allen & Co., a top-tier investment bank. The firm, founded over a century ago in New York, is small compared to behemoths like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and seems to prefer staying largely invisible to the wider world (it doesn’t appear to have a public-facing website).
The Sun Valley conference, which the firm started in the early 1980s, has helped it punch way above its weight in the investment banking business, giving wannabe attendees an incentive to funnel business to the bank to better their odds of getting a ticket.
The bank has played key roles in blockbuster tech and media deals of the past, including Google’s initial public offering, Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Time Warner Cable’s merger with Charter Communications.
Today, even when Allen & Co. isn’t the first or second banker a client is likely to call, some companies like to cut it in on deals because of its influence.
The firm has some ground rules for the people lucky enough to score an invite to Sun Valley, attendees say.
Want to come back next year? Don’t talk to the press about the event, don’t arrive tardy to one of its sessions and don’t skip out early (some exceptions are allowed).
Even once you’ve made the cut, though, a hierarchy remains within its rarefied walls.
Attendees are known to compare dinner invitations and show off their ties to Herb Allen III—president of Allen & Co. and grandson of its co-founder. That kind of billionaire pecking order was even satirized in an episode of the HBO series “Succession” that takes place at a Sun Valley–like event called Argestes.
In that episode, the character Tom Wambsgans asks his lackey, Cousin Greg, what kind of gift bag he has received at his chalet. “Did I get the nut and fruit box or the champagne and paperweight?” Tom asks Greg.
“Nuts,” Greg replies to a crestfallen Tom, before reassuring him: “The cashews are the size of boomerangs.”
Attempts to reach an Allen & Co. representative were unsuccessful. (Source. Emphasis mine.)
Herbert A. Allen III, President of Allen & Co. LLC. Image Source.
As The Information reported, the Allen & Co. investment bank works primarily out of the eye of the public, while wielding incredible power.
They don’t even have a website, and if one would want to work there, they must be selected, as there would be no way for someone to actually apply for a job there.
The current president of the bank is Herbert A. Allen III, the grandson of the founder, who took over the bank from his father’s control back in 2002.
He went to school at Yale, although I did not find any record of him being part of the Skull & Bones fraternity at Yale that has produced so many presidents and world leaders, such as George Bush and Mao Zedong. (See: “Yale University and the Skull and Bones Society – Training Satanic Zionist Leaders for the World” in this article.)
I found an older article originally published at Forbes in 2004, and then also republished on CNN, which contained the best description of Allen & Co. that I could find.
Some excerpts:
Inside the Private World of Allen & Co. Putting a premium on personal ties, this family firm thrives in the land of the giants.
By Carol J. Loomis Reporter Associate Patricia Neering – June 28, 2004 (FORTUNE Magazine)
A few weeks from now, private jets of the large, CEO-carrying kind will start streaming into Hailey, Idaho, for what may be the biggest annual event on the corporate calendar: Allen & Co.’s conference at Sun Valley.
Headline names from the media, entertainment, computer, and Internet worlds–people like Bill Gates and Michael Eisner and Meg Whitman–will alight with their families and settle in for a real stretch of time, five days. They’ll listen to speeches and participate in panels, bicycle, play golf, and go whitewater rafting.
You’ll probably read a lot in the days ahead about the Sun Valley conference–its star power has earned it coverage in the likes of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. But you probably won’t read much about Allen & Co., the tiny outfit behind the splashy extravaganza.
So here’s a rare look inside this very private family firm as it moves to a third generation of Allen leadership…
To say the firm is unusual would be an understatement. With 175 employees spread over three floors in an undistinguished building at 711 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Allen & Co. functions in some ways like a typical investment bank, pursuing underwriting, mergers and acquisitions, and other advisory work.
It is an institutional broker and manages money for wealthy individuals, including members of the Allen family. But it has no research department and has never had a New York Stock Exchange membership.
Yet Allen & Co. is a consummate niche player. Its specialty: forging long-lasting and lucrative relationships with corporate leaders. Its latest coup: a plum role in the coveted Google IPO.
Famed investor Charles Allen and his brother, Herbert, founded the firm in the 1920s. Herbert’s son Herbert Anthony Allen, now 64, expanded the business and still watches over it today.
In late 2002 control passed to his son of the same name, Herb, 37, who keeps so low a profile that most executives in the securities industry probably don’t even know he’s now the boss.
On Wall Street, where consolidation has been the rule, family firms are a scarce commodity. To have one that has navigated its way into the third generation of management, maintaining all the while a considerable mystique, is thoroughly remarkable.
Under any structure or boss, Allen & Co. will continue its entrepreneurial and opportunistic ways, and personal relationships will remain the key to its success.
Take the case of Google, the season’s must-have IPO. One of the firm’s bankers, Nancy Peretsman, knew Google’s president, Eric Schmidt, at Princeton and has patiently worked, as Allen & Co. habitually does, to build a client relationship.
The payoff came when Google announced the names of the 31 underwriters that would handle its IPO. Allen is slated to be in a small group of firms just below the two giants serving as managing underwriters, Morgan Stanley and CSFB.
And if the timing of Google’s offering doesn’t get in the way, one or both of the company’s young co-CEOs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, will be at Sun Valley (as will Schmidt).
Joining them will be Allen’s three marquee clients, Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, and the newest Coca-Cola CEO, Neville Isdell, on whose board Herbert sits, sometimes knocking heads.
The kind of person-to-person banking that Allen practices has paid off nicely. Each of the past four editions of the Forbes 400 has estimated Herbert’s wealth at $1.8 billion. Asked recently about the accuracy of that figure, Allen claimed not to have a clue what he is worth but also snorted, “Forbes has no idea, and neither will you.”
Herb the son joined Allen in 1992, at first spending his time searching for highly speculative stocks–the $2 kind–to go into the firm’s eclectic portfolio. Today, a year and a half into the CEO job, he gets excellent marks from many people.
“He’s very smart, he listens, he has a great sense of humor,” says institutional investor Michael Larson, who runs Bill Gates’ money.
Let’s turn back to the other momentous event of 1982, the starting of the Sun Valley conference. It was an idea whose time had not really come: Herbert Allen initially had to beg clients to attend. But today the problem is keeping the crowd down to the 300 or so adults who will fit into Sun Valley’s main conference room.
Essentially Allen needs three kinds of people at Sun Valley: CEOs, families of CEOs, and institutional investors. It was Herbert Allen’s genius to encourage his attendees to bring their children and turn them over to armies of babysitters. This hospitality induces guests like Bill and Melinda Gates to bring their three kids and stay for the full five days, not just the one that might well be Bill’s maximum at some other kind of gathering.
The CEOs are obviously needed for their presentations and brainpower. “Sun Valley,” says Disney’s Michael Eisner, “is a cross between summer camp and an SAT test.” Eisner, of course, also was a participant in a famous deal first discussed on a roadway in Sun Valley: Disney’s 1996 purchase of Capital Cities/ABC. For that transaction, Allen was later paid $2 million for providing Cap Cities with a fairness opinion.
The institutional investors are essential in this picture because Allen wants their business and gets a large amount of it–often simply because of Sun Valley.
Lacking analysts, Allen tends to turn to what it sometimes calls “direct research,” which typically involves bringing money managers together with clients and other corporate executives at small meetings that the firm has arranged. If you will pardon the topographical dissonance of this comparison, Sun Valley is the Mount Everest of direct research. (Full article.)
Notice that last paragraph I quoted, which states that Allen & Co. has NO ANALYSTS! And although this was written 20 years ago in 2004, where Silicon Valley was just beginning to emerge from the Dot-com stock market crash, it is obvious that this investment firm became rich and powerful the “old fashioned” way, by direct human-to-human contact and the pooling together of their knowledge, without the use of technology.
Is this still true today? Given the continued importance of the Sun Valley Conference, I would guess that it is. No Internet, no AI, no social media, just meetings between the Globalists behind closed doors.
This kind of human-to-human networking and communication is something AI will never be able to replicate, and it would be interesting to know (although those of us who have not been invited will never probably know) if these old school Billionaires will put the younger technologists in their place, such as Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and figure out that they are building wealth today on total AI hype, and that it will soon come crashing down.
Whatever does happen at Sun Valley this year, you can be sure that it will be MUCH more significant than what happens the week after at the GOP Convention in Milwaukee that will distract the highly medicated and vaccine-damaged masses to either pure joy, or pure hysteria, totally unaware that the people who actually run this country had already met and made most of their decisions the week before in Idaho, and that it doesn’t matter what side of the political aisle you are on.
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The post Major July 2024 Events: Republican National Convention vs. Sun Valley Conference for Billionaires – Which One Will Shape “Elections”? first appeared on Vaccine Impact.
