Dominion Voting Systems is under scrutiny for its ownership structure. Its parent company raised funds with the help of a Swiss bank before the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The transaction is odd in several ways. Some speculate a Chinese entity could be an indirect investor in the company.
The unusual transaction led some to speculate a Chinese entity could be the indirect investor of Dominion.
The voting machine maker was acquired by New York-based private equity firm Staple Street Capital in 2018.
This October, Staple Street raised $400 million dollars with the help of UBS Securities LLC. It’s a subsidiary of Swiss bank UBS based in New York.
There are several unusual features of the fund-raising.
According to Buyouts Insider, the private equity firm received the money quickly after “pushing through marketing despite the pandemic-slowed fundraising environment.”
“The fund-raising seems unusual because of the pace and the structure. I spoke with a senior executive at a large hedge fund in New York and he told me that typically private equities when they want to raise funds, it’s like a one-year process,” said Emel Akan, an economic policy reporter at The Epoch Times.
Instead of having multiple closes throughout a year, Akan says the firm did a “one-and-done” deal.
Her source says that means a single strategic client may have taken up the entire fund.
“When I asked if it’s possible to raise a fund quickly, he said that it is possible still if you have one strategic buyer, that takes up all the funds, and it seems like it is the case here,” said Akan.
Another unusual feature of UBS Securities is two of its board members appear to be Chinese nationals, according to the company’s profile page on Bloomberg.
NTD reported on this on Dec. 5. Following the report, these names no longer appeared on the company’s profile page, raising questions about why.
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