The founder of 777 Partners, the poster child for the underbelly of Wall Street’s insurance push, pleaded guilty to fraud Thursday.
A Semafor investigation in 2023 found that 777, which announced itself with a bold bid to buy UK soccer club Everton, had been funneling insurance policyholders’ money into risky bets that it ginned up itself. The collapse of 777, and the spotlight on exactly what it had been doing with policyholders’ life-insurance money, threatened to bring new scrutiny to what has become Wall Street’s favorite trade.
It turns out the party pooper, as we wrote a few weeks ago, wasn’t 777 founder Joshua Wander, a hotshot outsider, but rather a consummate insider: Mark Walter, who did as much as anyone to invent the private equity-insurance trade and is now embroiled in a DOJ investigation that has generated scrutiny of the entire industry.
— Liz Hoffman