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  • Wasn't the bulk of Sunak's riches sourced from the state anyway? As I understood it, his hedge fund owned a stake in ABN Amro, which was acquired by RBS, which was then acquired by the UK government to stave off a collapse of the UK banking sector. Some, if not all, of his millions came from that bailout.

  • Wasn't the bulk of Sunak's riches sourced from the state anyway? As I understood it, his hedge fund owned a stake in ABN Amro, which was acquired by RBS, which was then acquired by the UK government to stave off a collapse of the UK banking sector. Some, if not all, of his millions came from that bailout.

    I think the problem is that this can't really be proved. It's alleged his firm inflated ABN shares and therefore their stake, making the sale to RBS more likely, at which point presumably the stake was sold for profit.

    But to allege it was Sunak shorting (in the general sense of betting on a future price fall), or by encouraging the deal, contributing to the banking collapse, in which the UK government bought the shares at a higher price, or that by doing so the public purse effectively paid for almost all of the c. £500 million [edit: this was the sale price of the stake, not the gain]...

    ... would require alleging that Sunak personally knew ABN was overvalued. Which is difficult to do, especially when there were competing bidders in the sale, I think.

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