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Players
The Players section of our site lists some of the most influential people on Wall Street. Whether currently active or no longer on the street, these people and entities have established themselves as titans of the financial world. Some are famous, some are infamous, but each has made an impression on the global economy.
| Name | Description | Importance |
| Abby Joseph Cohen | A Wall Street economist who is a partner at Goldman Sachs. She is known for being a permabull. Although her early prediction for the 1990s bull market gave rise to her fame, she became ridiculed for her continued bullish calls even after March 2000 and for her failure to predict the 2008 crash. | Low |
| Andrés Iniesta | Spanish midfielder for 2010 World Cup champions. Scored the second goal in a 2-1 win against Chile and was also named man of the match. For his excellent performances in helping Spain reach the final of the tournament, Iniesta was shortlisted for the Golden Ball award. He scored the winning goal in the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final against Netherlands in the 116th minute. | Low |
| Barney Frank |
United States House Representative for Massachusetts's 4th congressional district since 1981. He is a member of the Democratic Party. In 1982, he won his first full term, and he has been re-elected ever since by wide margins; he is the longest serving House member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation.
Frank became the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in 2007 after the Democratic Party won a majority in the House. The committee oversees the entire financial services industry, which includes the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries. |
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| Ben Bernanke | Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve since February, 2006. A graduate of Harvard University, Bernanke earned a Ph.D. from MIT. Bernanke worked as a university professor for over 20 years before joining the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2002. He then went on to serve as Chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisors before being appointed to his current post. As head of the central bank, which controls short term interest rates, he has more influence over the nation's currency value than any other person. Traders scrutinize his public engagements as they are often used to drop subtle clues regarding future monetary policy. | High |
| Bill Gates | Software visionary is now the world's second-richest man. Net worth at $53 billion, still up $13 billion in a year as Microsoft shares rose 50% in 12 months, value of investment vehicle Cascade swelled. More than 60% of fortune held outside Microsoft; investments include Four Seasons hotels, Televisa, Auto Nation. Stepped down from day-to-day duties at Microsoft in 2008 to focus on philanthropy. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation dedicated to fighting hunger, improving education in America's high schools, developing vaccines against malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS. (source: forbes) | Mid |
| Bill Miller | Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Legg Mason Capital Management. He is the PM of Legg Mason mutual funds, Legg Mason Value Trust and Legg Mason Opportunity Trust. In addition, he serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Santa Fe Institute. He has won several awards for his money management and SmartMoney ranked him among the top 30 most influential people in investing. A graduate with honors of Washington and Lee University, he served as a military intelligence officer and then pursued a Ph.D. degree in philosophy from Johns Hopkins. | Low |
| Carl Icahn | A PE investor and corporate raider who has taken substantial or controlling positions in companies including Western Union, Viacom, Marvel Comics, Revlon, Fairmont Hotels, Blockbuster, Time Warner, and Motorola. From Queens, NY, he attended Princeton University and NYU School of Medicine, but left before graduating. As of 2010, Forbes calculated his net worth as $10.5B, which makes him the 59th wealthiest person in the world. | High |
| Carlos Slim Helu & family | Telecom tycoon who pounced on privatization of Mexico's national telephone company in the 1990s becomes world's richest person for first time after coming in third place last year. Net worth at $53.5 billion, up $18.5 billion in a year. Recently received regulatory approval to merge his fixed-line assets into American Movil, Latin America's biggest mobile phone company. His construction conglomerate, Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo, builds roads and energy infrastructure. Son of a Lebanese immigrant also owns stakes in financial group Inbursa, Bronco Drilling, Independent News & Media, Saks and New York Times Co. Newspaper outfit's stock popped in early March on talk he might buy a controlling stake; he denies the rumor. Donating $65 million to fund a research project in genomic medicine with American billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad. (source: Forbes) | Mid |
| Derek Jeter | Professional baseball player in the MLB who has been on the NY Yankees team for his entire career. In 2003, he became the team's captain. He won Rookie of the Year in 1996 when the Yankees won the World Series. He has been honored as an All-Star 11 times and won the Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards four times. In 2000, he became the only player in history to win both the All-Star Game MVP and World Series MVP Award in the same year. He is one of the athletes, alongside Wayne Gretzky, whom HFL looks up to for maintaining a clean reputation. | Low |
| Elena Kagan |
The Solicitor General of the United States and a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kagan was born and raised in New York City. After attending Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, she completed federal Court of Appeals and Supreme Court clerkships. She began her career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, leaving to serve as an Associate White House Counsel and later policy adviser under President Bill Clinton. After a nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which expired without action, she became a professor at Harvard Law School and was later named its Dean.
She was appointed Solicitor General by President Barack Obama on January 26, 2009. On May 10, 2010, Obama nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy from the impending retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens at the end of the Supreme Court's 2009–2010 term. |
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| Eric Cantor | Representative of Virginia's 7th congressional district. He is currently serving as Republican Whip for the 111th United States Congress, after previously serving as chief deputy whip for six years. Cantor is currently the only Jewish Republican in the United States Congress. | Mid |
| Harry Reid | United States Senator from Nevada and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected to the Senate in 1986, he was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004, and is currently seeking a fifth term in 2010. Reid has been the Senate Majority Leader since January 2007, having previously served as Minority Leader from 2005 until the Democrats won control of the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections. He earlier served as Senate Minority Whip (1999–2001, 2001, 2003–2005) and Senate Majority Whip (2001, 2001–2003). | High |
| Herman Van Rompuy | First permanent President of the European Council for the period from December 2009 to May 2012. He served as the Prime Minister of Belgium from December 2008 to November 2009. Described as the painstaking consensus builder of impossible compromises, he has been praised by the likes of Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of the UK. A statement made by Van Rompuy at a news conference after his selection illustrates his approach: "Every country should emerge victorious from negotiations. A negotiation that ends with a defeated party is never a good negotiation. I will consider everyone's interests and sensitivities. Even if our unity remains our strength, our diversity remains our wealth." | Mid |
| James Bullard | The 12th president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Prior to his current role, he was vice president and deputy director of research for monetary analysis at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. In addition, he serves as an adjunct faculty member and Ph.D. adviser at Washington University in St. Louis. A graduate of St. Cloud State University, he went on to obtain a Ph.D. in economics from Indiana University. | Mid |
| Jeff Zucker | The President and CEO of NBC Universal since February 2007 and has been at NBC since 1986 (when he was not admitted to Harvard Law School). Under Zucker, NBC fell to being the lowest (from number one) rated of the four broadcast networks. A graduate of Harvard University, he served as President of the school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, and spurred the rivalry with the Harvard Lampoon, which was headed by Conan O'Brien. | Low |
| Jeremy Siegel | The Russell E. Palmer Professor of Finance at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is an economic and market commentator and appears regularly on CNBC, CNN, and NPR in addition to writing columns for Kiplinger's Personal Finance. He graduated from Columbia University wth a degree in math and economics and received his Ph.D. from MIT. Back in 2000, he was criticized for being too bullish. Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, is one of his lifelong friends whom he often debates on TV. | Mid |
| Jimmy Rogers | Co-founder of the Quantum Fund, one of the first international funds, and creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index. He is a financial commentator based in Singapore and Miami. A graduate of Yale University, he is also a guest professor at Columbia University School of Business and a regular guest on Bloomberg and CNBC. | High |
| John Boehner | Republican American politician who is currently serving as the House Minority Leader in the 111th Congress. He serves as a U.S. Representative from Ohio's 8th congressional district, which includes several rural and suburban areas near Cincinnati and Dayton and a small portion of Dayton itself. | |
| Julie Foudy | Midfielder for U.S. women's soccer team from 1987 to 2004. She served as the Captain from 2000 to 2004. She is a graduate of Stanford University. Of course she is only relevant because she went to school with Klein and makes it onto our Players list as she has become more successful than Klein. | Low |
| Kathleen Sebelius | American politician currently serving as the 21st Secretary of Health and Human Services. | Mid |
| Kevin Warsh | Member of Board of Governors of Fed Reserve since February 2006. Previously served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Executive Secretary of the National Economic Council from 2002 to 2006. He worked in M&A at Morgan Stanley from 1995 to 2002. He is a graduate of Stanford University and received his JD at Harvard Law. Klein is not fond of him. | Mid |
| Lakshmi Mittal | London's richest resident oversees ArcelorMittal, world's largest steelmaker. Net profits fell 75% in 2009. Mittal took 12% pay cut amid slump but improved outlook pushed stock up a third in past year. Looking to expand in his native India; wants to build steel mills in Jharkhad and Orissa but has not received government approval. Started in family steel business in India in 1970s; branched out on his own in 1994. Initially bought up steel mills on the cheap in Eastern Europe. Earned $1.1 billion for selling his interest in a Kazakh refinery in December. Sits on the boards of Goldman Sachs, EADS. Upped stake in struggling British soccer team QPR in February. Funding 400-foot sculpture to be built in London's Olympic Park in time for 2012 Olympics. | Mid |
| Lloyd Blankfein | CEO (at least for now) of Goldman Sachs since June 2006 after the nomination of former CEO Hank Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury. Prior to his current role, he was President and COO of Goldman. From April 2002 to January 2004 he served as Vice Chairman of Goldman. He is a graduate of Harvard where he earned his B.A. and J.D. | High |
| Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) | A U.S. hedge fund that failed in the late 1990s, which led to the Fed Reserve supervising a bailout by other big banks. Founded in 1994 by John Meriwether, former vice-chairman and head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers. | |
| Mary Shapiro | First woman to become a chairperson of the SEC. In 2006 she became chariperson and CEO of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. She has also served in various roles as a financial services regulator in the Clinton, Bush, and Reagan administrations. Bernie Madoff called her a "dear friend" in a June 2006 SEC interview, but she "probably thinks, 'I wish I never knew this guy'" since there is no evidence of a close friendship between the two. | High |
| Maurice "Hank" Greenberg | Former Chairman and CEO of AIG. Greenberg helped AIG grow into the world's largest insurance and financial services corporation, but stepped down in 2005 due to a major accounting scandal. Greenberg served in the U.S. Army during the second World War, participating in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. He is a graduate of the University of Miami and New York Law School. | Mid |
| Mikhail Prokhorov |
Self-made Russian billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the New Jersey Nets. After graduating from the Moscow Finance Institute he made his name in the financial sector and went on to become one of Russia's leading industrialists in the precious metals sector. While he was running Norilsk Nickel, the company became the world's largest producer of nickel and palladium. He is currently chairman of Polyus Gold, Russia's largest gold producer, and President of Onexim Group.
Prokhorov is the second richest man in Russia and the 39th richest man in the world according to the 2010 Forbes list with an estimated fortune of $13.4 billion. |
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| Mukesh Ambani | Global ambitions: His Reliance Industries, already India's most valuable company, recently bid $2 billion for 65% stake in troubled Canadian oil sands outfit Value Creation. Firm's $14.5 billion offer to buy bankrupt petrochemicals maker LyondellBasell was rejected. Since September company has sold treasury shares worth $2 billion to be used for acquisitions. Late father, Dhirubhai, founded Reliance and built it into a massive conglomerate. After he died, Mukesh and his brother, Anil, ran the family business together for a brief time. But siblings feuded over control; mother eventually brokered split of assets, with Mukesh getting oil and gas and petrochemicals businesses. Still at odds with Anil over gas supply agreement; awaiting Supreme Court's final ruling. Has yet to move out of the family's high-rise, which he shares with his brother, into his new 27-story home in downtown Mumbai. Owns cricket team Mumbai Indians. | Mid |
| Nancy Pelosi | The 60th and current Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Before being elected Speaker in the 110th Congress, she was the House Minority Leader from 2003 to 2007, holding the post during the 108th and 109th Congresses. A member of the Democratic Party, Pelosi represents the 8th Congressional District of California. Pelosi is the first female Speaker of the House. She is also the first Californian and first Italian-American to hold the post. As Speaker, Pelosi is second in the line of presidential succession, following Vice President Joe Biden, which makes her the highest-ranking female politician in American history. | High |
| Neel Kashkari | Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability in the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2008. Currently, he works for PIMCO as a Managing Director. He was Senior Advisor to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in 2006. He is a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received his MBA from Wharton. His rise to fame was probably due to having gone to Penn with Klein. | Low |
| Paul Tudor Jones | Founder of Tudor Investment Corporation. Jones, a graduate of the University of Virginia, founded Tudor Investment Corporation in 1980. The multi-billion dollar hedge fund is located in Greenwich, Connecticut. Jones began his career as a clerk on trading floors, and went on to trade futures at the New York Cotton Exchange. Jones is famous for predicting the global economic crash in 1987. | Low |
| Simon Hobbs | CNBC anchor who reports throughout the day from 5a-7p. He has anchored several European programs. In November 2006, he was named International TV Presenter of the Year by the Association of International Broadcasters. We find him annoying. | Low |
| Timothy Geithner | The 75th and current United States Secretary of the Treasury, serving under President Barack Obama. He was previously the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Geithner's position includes a large role in directing the Federal Government's spending on the financial crisis of 2007–2010, including allocation of the $350 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. At the end of his first year in office, he continued to deal with multiple high visibility issues, including administration efforts to restructure the regulation of the nation's financial system, attempts to spur recovery of both the mortgage market and the automobile industry, demands for protectionism, President Obama's tax changes, and negotiations with foreign governments on approaches to worldwide financial issues. | High |
| Warren Buffet | America's favorite investor up $10 billion in past 12 months on surging Berkshire Hathaway shares; says U.S. has survived economic "Pearl Harbor," but warns recovery will be slow. Shrewdly invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General Electric amid 2008 market collapse. Recently acquired railroad giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $26 billion. "We've put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. When it's raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble." Berkshire Hathaway book value was up 19.8% to $21.8 billion in 2009. Son of Nebraska stockbroker met value investor Benjamin Graham while studying economics at Columbia. Took over textile firm Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, used company as a vehicle to invest in insurance (Geico), food (Dairy Queen), utilities (MidAmerican Energy) and recently green tech (electric-car maker BYD). | High |
| Wayne Gretzky | Former Canadian professional ice hockey player, nicknamed "The Great One." He has been regarded as the best hockey player ever by many sports columnists and pro athletes. He retired in April 1999 with 40 regular-season records, 15 playoff records, and six All-Star records. He is one of the athletes, alongside Derek Jeter, whom HFL looks up to for maintaining a clean reputation. | Low |