The Mooch's China deal is dead

Anthony Scaramucci will no longer sell his financial firm, SkyBridge Capital, to the Chinese conglomerate HNA.
The deal was announced in late 2016.
HNA has been having financial problems, selling bits of its stake in Deutsche Bank.

Dow Jones reports that Anthony Scaramucci, who spent 10 days as the White House Press Secretary, will no longer sell his financial firm SkyBridge Capital to Chinese conglomerate HNA in what was reportedly a $180 million deal. He will return to SkyBridge as a co-managing partner.

This comes as HNA, a massive firm known as a "gray rhino" in China, has been forced to sell assets after a years-long buying spree.

Scaramucci's firm is likely best known for the massive bash it used to throw in Las Vegas every year, one that attracts world leaders and stars of the world of finance for four days in the desert.

But of course that's not the only business SkyBridge has. It is a fund of funds, which is to say that it is an investment fund that connects people (in this case well-off but not necessarily rich professionals like doctors and lawyers) to other investment funds.

Over the last few years, businesses like this have been hurting on Wall Street. When you pay a fund of funds, you pay a fee to them, and a fee to the hedge fund they're connecting you to. The problem with that, of course, is that it's expensive, and when hedge funds aren't performing (as they haven't been for the past couple of years) no one wants to pay high fees.

Scaramucci told me in an interview in 2016

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. It's the nine-person panel that decides if a foreign company gets to buy a US company.

What's more, HNA is in terrible shape. Deal after deal has left it cash poor and heavily in debt. Earlier this month, it sold off more of its stake in Deutche Bank. This is why President Xi Jinping refers to it as a "gray rhino" — a c

A few more things about HNA:

as well as its founders
suing him for defamation
HNA CEO Adam Tan
reports here in the US of HNA

HNA's problems continue to pile, and it continues to owe a long list of people money. Unfortunately for Scaramucci — he was clearly at the very bottom of that list.

The Mooch's China deal is dead

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