Yellen Earns 7.8 Billion Won from Speaking Engagements to Wall Street Banks

Ahead of Finance Minister Nominee Hearing, Public Disclosure
High-Priced Lectures After Fed Chair Resignation
Possible Criticism from Progressive Faction within Democratic Party

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy New York=Correspondent Baek Jong-min] Red flags have been raised over the congressional approval of Janet Yellen, the nominee for U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Tony Blinken, the nominee for Secretary of State. It has been revealed that they received large sums of money from companies under the pretext of lectures and consulting.

On the 1st (local time), political media outlet The Hill cited the recently disclosed financial disclosure documents and reported that Yellen received more than $7.2 million (about 7.8 billion KRW) over the past two years from 16 major companies, including Wall Street financial firms and hedge funds, as fees for speeches.

Yellen received large speaking fees from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Google, UBS, Citadel, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Salesforce, and others.

She earned $1 million (about 1.09 billion KRW) from nine speeches at Citi alone, and the hedge fund Citadel paid her $800,000 (about 870 million KRW) in speaking fees.

The Wall Street Journal reported that after stepping down as Chair of the Federal Reserve in 2018, Yellen frequently gave speeches to Wall Street financial firms about economic outlooks and monetary policy.

Yellen has also announced that she will terminate her consulting contract with the Australian investment firm Magellan Financial Group.

Politico stated, "Yellen has so far received mostly praise from progressives, but the millions of dollars she earned from large banks will raise questions about how close she is to Wall Street."

Tony Blinken, nominee for Secretary of State, who co-founded and operated the foreign and security strategy advisory firm WestExec Advisors, earned nearly $1.2 million (about 1.3 billion KRW) from clients over two years. His clients include Blackstone, Bank of America, Facebook, Uber, McKinsey & Company, pharmaceutical company Gilead, investment bank Lazard, Boeing, AT&T, Japan's SoftBank, Canada's Royal Bank, LinkedIn, and Sotheby's.

He has drafted contracts to sell his stake in WestExec and plans to sell his shares in the sister venture capital firm WestExec Ventures as well.

The Wall Street Journal predicted that if the Democratic Party gains the Senate majority in the Georgia Senate runoff election scheduled for the 5th, the confirmation hearings will likely proceed relatively smoothly.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.