In public, Ray Dalio has all the hallmarks of an icon. He built his hedge fund Bridgewater Associates into the largest in the world; he signed The Giving Pledge; He wrote a book about his principles (title: Principles) which sold millions of copies.
New York Times reporter Rob Copeland is here to shatter the illusion. On Tuesday, Copeland released a new biography, “The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend,” based on interviews with hundreds of people close to Dalio.
Copeland portrays Dalio as an egomaniacal personality cult leader with a penchant for cruelty. Under Dalio’s rule, sexual harassment was allegedly swept under the rug, employees were arbitrarily fired, and paranoia spread in the workplace, he writes. Many people were crying.
No wonder Dalio’s lawyers tried to prevent the book from being published. “Bridgewater and Dalio hired not one or two, but three top law firms to send a batch of threatening letters to my publisher,” Copeland writes. “They threatened a lawsuit that would hold me and my publisher accountable for billions of dollars.”
In a statement posted on his LinkedIn page, Dalio said: “The book should be viewed for what it is, which is another one of those sensational and inaccurate tabloid books written to sell books to people who like gossip.”
“In short,” he continued, “the author applied for a job at Bridgewater and was rejected.” He then became an investigative reporter at a well-known newspaper and made a career of writing distorted stories about me and Bridgewater… In fact, there is The author states in the foreword that the book is full of invented dialogues.”
Copeland admitted at the end of the book that he had applied for jobs at Bridgewater twice. At first he was still at the beginning of his career and applied for numerous other positions at the same time; In the second case, about two years later, a recruiter reached out to him, but he withdrew midway through the application process. Nor did Copeland say he invented the dialogue. Rather, he wrote: “In some cases the dialogue in this book flows directly from the subject; in other cases it comes from others in the room or from people who are informed after the fact.”
Speaking to The Daily Beast, Copeland called Dalio’s attempt to discredit him a weak attempt to distract from “the facts of the book.”
“[Dalio] has been distorting reality to a considerable extent for years. And everyone around him knows this, including his top deputies. The people who run Bridgewater know this now. I don’t know if Ray knows,” he said.
Copeland credits Dalio for his early success and years of positive results at Bridgewater: “He realized what very few people realized at the time, which was that telling people you weren’t going to lose their money was more effective than telling them.” to say it would make them money,” he said.
Yet, he argued, Dalio had wrongly positioned himself as an all-knowing thought leader with erudite emotional intelligence. “The real life of Ray Dalio … is almost absurdly different from the caricature he painted,” he said.
The fund is a riveting read with a wealth of shocking anecdotes – so much so that Amazon Studios has already acquired the rights, according to the New York Post.
Below are some of the highlights:
Dalio had a huge ego
One of Bridgewater’s best-known features is a rating system that Dalio introduced to assess employees’ adherence to his principles (the list now includes “embrace tough love” and “be radically transparent”). Copeland reports that years ago, one of the employees tasked with developing employee measurement software encountered a problem: two of Dalio’s subordinates scored higher on “credibility” than he did. The billionaire — who has compared himself “to the Dalai Lama” and Steve Jobs — reportedly found a solution: He set himself as the new “baseline.”
“Dalio’s rating was now numerically immune to negative feedback,” says Copeland.
Dalio’s “radical transparency” knew no bounds
As part of Bridgewater’s culture of transparency, employees were encouraged to evaluate each other’s performance, and they filed complaints about all sorts of small things, from toilet paper in the restrooms to the size of parking permits to the quality of the peas in the cafeteria.
Many meetings were also recorded. In a 2009 anecdote, Dalio berated an employee for failing to quickly hire new employees. “The people in the room remember him screaming, waiting for her lip to quiver, then yelling at her again for not being able to control her emotions,” Copeland writes.
Apparently Dalio had a sizzle film made of her breakdown. He sent it to every person in the company and had potential applicants look at it, the book says.
FBI Director James Comey on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 20, 2017.
Joshua Roberts/Portal
James Comey was Dalio’s loyal deputy
Before becoming FBI director — and facing Donald Trump — Comey served as general counsel at Bridgewater and received a salary of $7 million, Copeland writes. For a while, Comey fit the bill. He investigated pressing issues – at least in Dalio’s eyes – such as a detailed investigation into a woman who complained that one of her colleagues didn’t bring bagels to the office “at the appointed time of the day.” Employees accused of misconduct were brought forward internally placed in court.
The paranoia was great. “Some employees took out the batteries on their company cell phones when they were with family or friends,” reports Copeland.
In one case, Comey allegedly worked with a Bridgewater manager to trap workers by leaving out a folder with the manager’s name on it and checking to see if anyone opened it. “Comey watched as a low-ranking Bridgewater employee stumbled upon the folder and began reading through it,” Copeland writes. The executive and Comey “tried the employee, found him guilty and fired him with Dalio’s approval.” Comey declined to comment.
Dalio did not welcome scrutiny
Around 2017, Bridgewater was struggling to generate high returns, and some of Dalio’s subordinates thought they had discovered the culprit: their boss. They examined his businesses and “investment ideas” and found that he was “as wrong as he was right,” the book says.
As the executives presented their findings, Copeland writes, they “sat nervously, waiting for Dalio’s response.” The result? “Dalio picked up the piece of paper, crumpled it into a ball and threw it away.”
He wasn’t just difficult at work
According to Copeland, Dalio also expressed his “radical transparency.” “When the Dalio sons gave their father a gift on Christmas morning, the Bridgewater founder would immediately tell them whether it was a good or bad choice,” Copeland writes. “If it was bad, Dalio would detail why it was wrong.”
Some women in the company were reportedly harassed
Copeland cites several examples in which women in Bridgewater were allegedly harassed, groped or made uncomfortable. In some cases, he writes, Dalio knew about the allegations. He cites a 2012 incident in which one of the billionaire’s top managers told a younger employee to take off her shirt at a company event. Both were married.
Later, Copeland writes, the executive claimed the encounter was consensual. Comey was assigned to investigate. He asked the woman “a pointed question,” Copeland writes: “Did you feel like you had a choice?” The women responded that she had not been “physically coerced,” but neither did she feel like she had ” “no” could have said. The book states: “Comey presented his findings to Dalio, who swept the episode aside. Dalio told everyone in Bridgewater that he had investigated the party and that no further questions were necessary.