The doomed youth, already a staunch supporter of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher, calmly explained to a French reporter that he had set his plans in motion five years earlier when he invested a £50 inheritance in shares in the utility company GEC. Now a multi-millionaire, the newly installed business secretary could have an additional windfall from the potential sale of Somerset Capital Management, the investment firm he helped start in 2007. It emerged on Thursday that talks were underway to sell Somerset as its co-founder and chief executive Dominic Johnson prepares to follow in Rees-Mogg’s footsteps and turn to a career in politics. A sale could result in a multimillion-pound payout for the business secretary, who stopped taking a salary from the company in 2019 but remains an equity member. His stock is believed to be in his teens, although this information is not publicly available. In 2018, during incomplete merger talks with an American company, Somerset was believed to be valued at between £70m and £100m. At the time, it managed $10 billion in assets on behalf of a mix of individual and institutional investors, though that has since dropped to $5 billion. Media reports said the staunch Brexiter had earned at least £7m in dividends from Somerset since the 2016 EU referendum and before he stopped taking a salary, Rees-Mogg was receiving around £15,000 a month from the company on top of salary of his deputy. Somerset has traditionally invested in listed companies based in emerging markets such as China, Korea, India and Mexico, and is believed to have benefited from the fall in the value of the pound following the Brexit vote, as its holdings were abroad. His payments from Somerset continued, despite being a so-called ‘sleeper’ shareholder who no longer plays a role in advising on investment strategy or the operation of the business. Rees-Mogg reportedly received at least £600,000 worth of dividends last year, according to the Times, although that was down from £800,000 a year earlier due to a 35% slide in profits, linked in part to the sell-off in emerging markets. Analysis of the company’s investments, based on data from research agency Morningstar, shows stakes in major Chinese companies including Alibaba and Tencent, which runs social media platform WeChat and owns stakes in Spotify, Tesla, Snapchat, Monzo and Reddit. There are also stakes in Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which is said to be preparing Apple’s iPhones and Macs next year. Somerset has also taken aim at Infosys – the global IT company founded by Indian billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, the father-in-law of former chancellor Rishi Sunak – as well as the owner of Taco Bell, Yum China, and beer companies Budweiser and Heineken. The figures also show the company owns small stakes in some Russian companies, including search engine Yandex, online recruiter HeadHunter and TCS Holding Group, which in turn owns the country’s second-largest credit card company, Tinkoff Bank. The cabinet minister, whose father, William Rees-Mogg, was publisher of The Times during the 1970s, previously undertook to reduce his stake in Somerset. He also owns an extensive property portfolio that includes two flats in Pall Mall, owned by his company Saliston, as well as a former school near Gournay Court – a Grade II* listed Somerset mansion where his mother lives – and a bungalow in Midsomer Norton. Before founding Somerset, Rees-Mogg worked for hedge funds in Hong Kong and Mayfair and is one of the richest ministers in Prime Minister Liz Truss’s cabinet. Spear’s Wealth Management estimated in 2019 that his net worth was “well in excess of £100m”, a figure which also accounted for the expected inheritance of his wife, Lady Helena de Chair, whose mother was said to be worth £45m. Oliver Crawley, a partner at Somerset, stressed that Rees-Mogg had not played a role in any of the firm’s investment decisions for over a decade. “Any corporate interest in Somerset is held pending under ministerial code,” he added. Rees-Mogg, contacted by the Guardian through its business department, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
