Trump Adviser Gary Cohn to Sell Stake in Chinese Bank Giant -
By KATE KELLY and STEVE EDERMARCH 16, 2017
The White House economic adviser Gary D. Cohn is selling a significant holding in the world’s largest bank
— which happens to be in China — as he clears potential conflicts of interest to serve in his new role.
The Chinese bank position appears to be the largest stock, private equity or hedge fund holding — apart from his shares in Goldman Sachs, where he was president —
that Mr. Cohn will have to sell because of his new job.
That’s an invitation for trouble.”
The ethics documents issued to Mr. Cohn, known as certificates of divestiture, and a separate set issued to his wife, Lisa Pevaroff-Cohn, indicate
that the couple will reinvest the proceeds of the Chinese bank stock sale and other asset sales into certain widely held assets, like Treasury bills or exchange-traded funds.
The stock that Mr. Cohn is selling is in the Industrial
and Commercial Bank of China, which with nearly $3.5 trillion in assets is the biggest on the planet, and it would be valued at about $16 million based on Thursday’s trading, according to details of his holdings in a set of documents issued by the Office of Government Ethics.
In a filing on Jan. 24, Goldman Sachs explained that
because of Mr. Cohn’s new government role, he would sell stakes in a variety of private equity funds and hedge funds managed by the firm.