Billionaire Ken Griffin treated his employees and their families from his Asia Pacific offices to an all-expenses-paid luxurious trip to Disneyland Tokyo to celebrate the company's anniversary, the Daily Mail reported on Monday.
Griffin, who is CEO of hedge fund Citadel LLC and founder of market maker Citadel Securities, also provided his guests with fast track passes to minimize wait times for the most popular rides, and treated them to private Maroon 5 and Calvin Harris concerts. Griffin is worth an estimated $45 billion.
Before introducing Maroon 5, Griffin told his employees, "the range of talent we have brought together is simply astonishing. We've created not one, but two firms at the forefront of the industry. Together, we have imagined and built the future of finance."
Last year Griffin took 10,000 staff members and their families to a three-day Walt Disney World trip, which also included several pop concerts.
A major Republican donor, Griffin has not been backing anyone in the GOP presidential primary but supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSanits last year, when he said the United States would be well served with DeSanits as president, according to CNBC News.
Griffin went from praising the job DeSantis has done as Florida governor to criticizing several of his policies, saying in particular that “the ongoing battle with Disney ... is pointless. It doesn’t reflect well on the ethos of Florida.”
Griffin told CNBC that "if I had my dream, we’d have a great Republican candidate in the primary who was younger, of a different generation, with a different tone for America. And we’d have a younger person on the Democratic side in the primary, who would have his message for our country.”
If that were the case, Griffin said, "we’d have a debate around ideas and principles and policies to make this a great nation. We’re not having that dialogue right now.”
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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