Robert Mercer

Mercer grew up in New Mexico. He developed an early interest in computers and in 1964 attended a National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia where he learned to program a donated IBM computer.[11] He went on to get a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from the University of New Mexico.[2] While working on his degree he had a job at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base writing programs where, though he felt he produced good work, he felt it was not optimized. He later said the experience left him with a "jaundiced view" of government-funded research.[11] He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1972.[2]

Mercer joined IBM Research in the fall of 1972 and worked at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York, where he helped develop Brown clustering, a statistical machine translation technique, as part of a speech recognition and translation research program led by Frederick Jelinek and Lalit Bahl.[12][13] In June 2014, Mercer received the Association for Computational Linguistics Lifetime Achievement Award for this work.[14]

In 1993, Mercer joined hedge fund Renaissance Technologies after being recruited by executive Nick Patterson.[13][15] The founder of Renaissance, James Harris Simons, a mathematician, preferred to hire mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists rather than business school students or financial analysts.[12][16][17] Mercer and a former colleague from IBM, Peter Brown, became co-CEOs of Renaissance when Simons retired in 2009.[13] Renaissance's main fund, Medallion, earned 39% per year on average from 1989 to 2006.[7] A bipartisan Senate panel estimated in 2014 that Medallion investors underpaid their taxes by some $6.8 billion over more than a decade by masking short-term gains as long-term returns.[18][19] As of 2014, Renaissance managed $25 billion in assets.[2] In November 2017, Mercer announced that he would be stepping down from his position at Renaissance Technologies. The decision was taken after the hedge fund faced backlash over Mercer's political activism.[20]

Mercer appears in the Paradise Papers as a director of eight Bermuda companies, some of which appear to have been used to legally avoid US taxes.[21]

In 2015, The Washington Post called Mercer one of the ten most influential billionaires in politics.[22] Since 2006, Mercer has donated about $34.9 million to Republican political campaigns in the US.[23]

Mercer has given $750,000 to the Club for Growth, $2 million to American Crossroads,[24] and $2.5 million to Freedom Partners Action Fund.[25] In 2010, he financially supported fringe biochemist[26] Art Robinson's unsuccessful efforts to unseat Peter DeFazio in Oregon's 44th congressional district.[27] In the 2013-2014 election cycle, Mercer donated the fourth largest amount of money among individual donors and the second most among Republican donors.[2]

Mercer joined the Koch brothers’ conservative political donor network after the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC, but Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, decided to establish their own political foundation.[28] The Mercer Family Foundation, run by Rebekah, has donated to a variety of conservative causes.[2]

Mercer has donated to the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Media Research Center, Reclaim New York, GAI, and Citizens for Self-Governance.[11][29][30] In 2013, Mercer was shown data by former Jimmy Carter pollster Patrick Caddell, who has been critical of top Democrats, and commissioned more research from Caddell that showed "voters were becoming alienated from both political parties and mainstream candidates".[11]

Mercer was the main financial backer of the Jackson Hole Summit, a "shadow" conference (not to be confused with a similarly named Federal Reserve conference) that took place in Wyoming in August 2015 to advocate for the gold standard.[7] He has also supported Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, Fred Kelly Grant (an Idaho activist who encourages legal challenges to environmental laws), a campaign for the death penalty in Nebraska, and funded ads in New York critical of the so-called "ground-zero mosque".[7] According to associates interviewed by Bloomberg, Mercer is concerned with the monetary and banking systems of the United States, which he believes are in danger from government meddling.[7] Mercer is a major source of funds of Breitbart News.[31] He gave at least $10 million to the media outlet, according to Newsweek.[32]

In 2015 Mercer also gave $400,000 to Black Americans for a Better Future, a conservative think tank led by Raynard Jackson.[33] Since 2017 Mercer has donated $87,100 to the same Super PAC.[34]

Mercer was portrayed by actor Aden Gillett in the 2019 HBO and Channel 4 produced drama entitled Brexit: The Uncivil War.[38][39]

Mercer and his wife Diana Lynne Dean have three daughters:[28] Jennifer ("Jenji"), Rebekah ("Bekah"), and Heather Sue. Rebekah runs the Mercer Family Foundation. The three Mercer daughters formerly owned a bakery called Ruby et Violette.[40]

Mercer plays competitive poker and owns an HO scale model railroad.[7] In 2009, Mercer filed suit against RailDreams Custom Model Railroad Design, alleging that RailDreams overcharged him by $2 million.[41]

Mercer lives at "Owl's Nest" mansion in Head of the Harbor, New York.[42] He has commissioned a series of yachts, all named Sea Owl.[43] The most recent one is 203 feet (62 metres) in length, and has a pirate-themed playroom for Mercer's grandchildren and a chandelier of Venetian glass.

In Florida, Mercer built a large stable and horse riding center. He has acquired one of the country's largest collections of machine guns and historical firearms, including a weapon Arnold Schwarzenegger wielded in The Terminator.[7]

In 2013, Mercer was sued by several members of his household staff, who accused him of docking their wages and failing to pay overtime compensation.[42] The lawsuit was settled, according to a lawyer who represented the staff members.[36]

Mercer's net worth is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars, and he is often referred to as a billionaire.[44][45]

• Mider, Zachary (2018 March 28). "Robert Mercer’s Secret Adventure as a New Mexico Cop." Bloomberg Businessweek.