In November 2017, Mercer announced he would step down fromRenaissance Technologies and sell his stake inBreitbart News to his daughters.[10] He was the majority owner ofSCL Group, a self-described "global elections management agency",[11] before it was dissolved in 2018.[3] In 2021, Mercer was involved in possibly the largest tax settlement in U.S. history, as he,James Simons, and other executives at the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies were ordered to pay as much as $7 billion to the IRS in back taxes.[12]
Mercer grew up inNew Mexico. He developed an early interest in computers and in 1964 attended aNational Youth Science Camp in West Virginia where he learned to program a donated IBM computer.[13] He went on to get a bachelor's degree inphysics and mathematics from theUniversity of New Mexico.[2] While working on his degree, he had a job at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory atKirtland Air Force Base writing programs where, though he felt he produced good work, he felt it was not optimized. He later said the experience left him with a "jaundiced view" of government-funded research.[13] He earned a Ph.D. incomputer science from theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1972.[2]
In 2014, a bipartisan Senate panel estimated that Medallion investors underpaid their taxes by some $6.8 billion over more than a decade, by masking short-term gains as long-term returns.[20][21] In 2014, Renaissance managed $25 billion in assets.[2] In November 2017, Mercer announced that he would be stepping down from his position at Renaissance Technologies. The decision was taken after the hedge fund faced a backlash over Mercer's political activism.[22]
Mercer appears in theParadise Papers as a director of eight Bermuda companies, some of which appear to have been used to legally avoid US taxes.[23]
In 2015,The Washington Post called Mercer one of the ten most influentialbillionaires in politics.[24] Since 2006, Mercer has donated about $34.9 million toRepublican political campaigns in the US.[25]
Mercer has given $750,000 to theClub for Growth, $2 million toAmerican Crossroads,[26] and $2.5 million toFreedom Partners Action Fund.[27] In 2010, he financially supportedfringe biochemist[28]Art Robinson's unsuccessful efforts to unseatPeter DeFazio in Oregon's 4th congressional district.[29] In the 2013-2014 election cycle, Mercer donated the fourth largest amount of money among individual donors and the second most among Republican donors.[2]
Mercer was the main financial backer of the Jackson Hole Summit, a "shadow" conference (not to be confused with a similarly named Federal Reserve conference) that took place in Wyoming in August 2015 to advocate for thegold standard.[6] He has also supportedDoctors for Disaster Preparedness, Fred Kelly Grant (an Idaho activist who encourages legal challenges to environmental laws), a campaign for thedeath penalty in Nebraska, and funded ads in New York critical of the so-called "ground-zero mosque".[6]
According to associates interviewed by Bloomberg, Mercer is concerned with the monetary and banking systems of the United States, which he believes are in danger from government meddling.[6] Mercer is a major source of funding forBreitbart News.[33] He gave at least $10 million to the media outlet, according toNewsweek.[34]
In 2015 Mercer also gave $400,000 to Black Americans for a Better Future, a conservative think tank led byRaynard Jackson.[35] Since 2017 Mercer has donated $87,100 to the same Super PAC.[36]
It has been reported that Cambridge Analytica has undisclosed links to Canadian digital firmAggregateIQ, which also played a pivotal role inDominic Cummings'Vote Leave campaign, where he delivered an estimated one billion individually curated targeted adverts to voters in the lead up to theBrexit referendum, in contravention of established voting rules. Neither Vote Leave nor Leave.EU informed the UK electoral commission of the donation despite the fact that a law demands that all donations valued over £7,500 must be reported. In 2018, the (UK)Electoral Commission found the Vote Leave campaign guilty of breaking electoral law.[37]
Mercer and his daughter Rebekah helped to obtain senior roles in the Trump campaign forSteve Bannon andKellyanne Conway.[31] Rebekah worked with Conway on the Cruz Super-PAC Keep the Promise in the2016 Republican primaries.[13] Mercer also financed a Super PAC,Make America Number One, which supported Trump's campaign.[31] Nick Patterson, a former colleague of Mercer's said in 2017 that Trump would not have been elected without Mercer's support.[17]
Mercer's family donated an undisclosed amount to the super PACProtect Ohio Values which was established to supportJD Vance for his2022 election to a Senate seat in Ohio.[40] After Mercer support forParler beginning in 2018, Vance, who foundedNarya Capital, allegedly provided advice concerning Parler to Mercer's daughterBekah.[41][a][b]
Mercer has said that theCivil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark federal statute arising from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, was a major mistake. In 2017,David Magerman, a former Renaissance employee, alleged in a lawsuit that Mercer had said that African Americans were economically better off before the civil rights movement, that white racists no longer existed in the United States, and that the only racists remaining wereblack racists.[17]
Mercer plays competitive poker and owns anHO scale model railroad.[6] In 2009, Mercer filed suit against RailDreams Custom Model Railroad Design, alleging that RailDreams overcharged him by $2 million.[56]
Mercer lives at "Owl's Nest" mansion inHead of the Harbor, New York.[57] He has commissioned a series of yachts, all namedSea Owl.[58] The most recent one is 203 feet (62 metres) in length, and has a pirate-themed playroom for Mercer's grandchildren and a chandelier ofVenetian glass.
In Florida, Mercer built a large stable and horse riding center. He has acquired one of the country's largest collections of machine guns andhistorical firearms, including a weaponArnold Schwarzenegger wielded inThe Terminator.[6]
In 2013, Mercer was sued by several members of his household staff, who accused him of docking their wages and failing to pay overtime compensation.[57] The lawsuit was settled, according to a lawyer who represented the staff members.[38]
Mercer's net worth is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars, and he is often referred to as a billionaire.[59][60]
^After Vance graduated from law school in 2013,Peter Thiel had employed Vance at Thiel’s venture capital firmMithril Capital Management LLC and, later, Thiel,Scott Dorsey who was a co-founder ofExactTarget,Google'sEric Schmidt, and the tech entrepreneurMarc Andreessen financially backed with large sums Vance’sNarya Capital which was co-founded by Colin Greenspon and was established on June 19, 2019, inColumbus with headquarters inCincinnati as part of Vance's campaign to counter "woke capital" but apparently was shut down in April of 2021 by Delaware regulators only one month after Narya Capital's registered agent "Cogency Global" had resigned.[40][42][43][44][45][46][47] As of June 2024, Narya Capital has investments in at least 19 ventures including investments with a real estate assessment software companyValueBase; a farmland-focused real estate investing company AcreTrader; the Longboat Key-based high-growth neutral video platformRumble through Ethan Fallang who is a partner with Narya Capital Management, LLC, and oversees its audits, accounting and taxes; insurtech Branch; and the aerospace startup True Anomaly withJonathan Lacoste of "Space.VC".[48][49][50][51]
