SCOTT Minerd transformed the investment firm owned by the Guggenheim family into a global financial giant worth more than $200 billion.
But what is the story behind one of Wall Street’s biggest names and what was his net worth?
Who was Scott Minerd?
Scott Minerd was born on March 23, 1959, in Connellsville.
He graduated from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
Scott Minerd arrived on Wall Street in his early 20s, just as the economy was starting to skyrocket.
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He started his career as an accountant at what is now PWC before joining Merrill Lynch, which was then a brokerage firm, in 1983.
He lasted five years at Merrill Lynch before moving to Morgan Stanley to lead its fixed-income group in Europe.
He then returned to New York in 1994 to start a role at Credit Suisse.
In 1996 at the age of 37 he left behind his career in finance and moved to Venice Beach, California to pursue bodybuilding.
But his retirement didn’t last long, when in 1998 Mark Walter, one of his former colleagues at Credit Suisse, headhunted Minerd to join a new firm that became Guggenheim Partners.
Minerd helped grow the firm into a global powerhouse.
In 2005, Minerd became Guggenheim’s chief investment officer.
The company manages $285 billion in assets and has 900 employees across the globe.
In 2020, Minerd was quizzed on TV about Guggenheim Partners’ decision to invest “up to 10 per cent of its net asset value in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.”
Minerd said: “Clearly Bitcoin and our interest in Bitcoin is tied to Fed policy and the rampant money printing that’s going on.
“Of course, we made the decision to start allocating toward Bitcoin when Bitcoin was at $10,000.
“It’s a little more challenging with the current price closer to $20,000.
“It’s amazing over a very short period of time, how big run-up we’ve had, but having said that, our fundamental work shows that Bitcoin should be worth about $400,000.
“We’re going to monitor the market and see how trading goes, what evaluation that ultimately we have to buy it.“
Guggenheim Partners’s prediction that Bitcoin should be worth $400,000 is based on the scarcity and relative valuation, such as things like gold as a percentage of GDP.
Minerd said: “Bitcoin actually has a lot of the attributes of gold and at the same time has an unusual value in terms of transactions.“
In 2021, Minerd said in an interview with CNBC he expected Bitcoin to head lower but investors shouldn’t be “anxious in putting money in Bitcoin now” as the price will be in consolidation mode for a number of years before reaching new heights.
Minerd added: “The digitalization of currency is just in its infancy. And how this evolves now is going to require a regulatory framework to legitimize it and I think we will move forward, and this will be transformative to the general economy.“
Who is Scott Minerd’s husband Eloy Méndez?
Scott Minerd was married to actor and producer Eloy Méndez.
Méndez made his acting debut in Ken Loach’s Bread And Roses in 2000 and has since appeared in The Gentleman Don La Mancha (2004), Stealing Las Vegas (2012) and, Running Wild (2017).
Méndez founded his own production company, Mighty Dog Entertainment, in 2014.
Among its productions is Return To The Philippines – a documentary about World War 2 veteran Leon Cooper.
What was Scott Minerd’s net worth?
Scott Minerd died on December, 22, 2022 from a heart attack with a fortune of $325 million – a stark comparison from the mere $15,000 per year he made when first starting at PWC back in the early 1980s.
Scott Minerd owned two penthouses in Miami which he paid $12.5 million for. The combined apartments have 11 bedrooms, 2 swimming pools, a sauna and a library.
