Jeffrey S. Yass (born 1956) is an American billionaire business magnate. According to Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world in 2023, Yass has a net worth of $28.5 billion, placing him as the 48th richest person in the world.
He is the co-founder and managing director of the Philadelphia-based Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and an early investor in TikTok. In 2001, he joined the executive advisory council of the Cato Institute.
Yass is considered the richest man in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. An influential political figure, he is one of the 10 largest political donors in the United States.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he is a major supporter of the Israeli far-right.
Yass’s fortune is derived from assets and proceeds associated with Susquehanna International Group, a market-making and proprietary trading firm headquartered in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
Yass is credited with 51% of the firm, based on its March 2023 form ADV filing that indicates Philadelphia Trading Inc owns a stake of between 50-75%. Yass is the sole director and principal of Philadelphia Trading Inc., according to Florida corporate filings.
Susquehanna’s annual revenue is calculated at $7.2 billion based on it having about 2,500 employees and the average revenue-to-employee multiple of a basket of competing market-making and proprietary trading firms. The business is valued using the average enterprise value-to-Sales and enterprise-to-value-to-Ebitda multiples of publicly-traded peers Virtu Financial Inc. and Flow Traders.
Susquehanna also owns about 15% of ByteDance, the tech firm that developed social media app TikTok, based on an October 2020 Wall Street Journal report and adjustments for dilution from subsequent funding rounds. Yass is credited with half of that stake based on his ownership of Susquehanna.
ByteDance recorded private trades that put its valuation at about $220 billion, according to a March 2023 Bloomberg News report. A 25% discount is applied to the $220 billion valuation in this analysis because of volatility and uncertainty about future value.
A June 21, 2022 report in Propublica based on leaked tax returns detailed more than $11 billion in income Yass collected between 2009 and 2018. That income is used to calculate the value of his other assets, including adjustments for taxes and market performance.
A spokesman for Yass didn’t respond to a request for comment on the billionaire’s net worth in August 2023.
Biography
Early life
Yass grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Queens, New York. He is the son of Gerald Yass, and his “childhood sweetheart” Sybil, who was at his bar mitzvah. Gerald has a sister, Carole. Gerald graduated with a BS from LIU Brooklyn in 1951, and worked as an accountant, rising to chairman of Datatab Inc. He later co-founded Philadelphia Trading, which became SIG. As of 2018, he still worked for SIG, as a senior executive and advisor.
Jeffrey Yass was educated at public schools in Queens. He earned a BS in mathematics and economics from Binghamton University. He pursued graduate studies in economics at New York University, but did not graduate.
Career
While at the State University of New York at Binghamton in the 1970s, Yass and five fellow students became friends and later co-founded Susquehanna International Group (SIG), the largest trader of liquid stocks in the US.
The billionaire trader Israel Englander sponsored Yass for a seat on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and SIG was initially run from an office at the Exchange. His father, Gerald Yass, also helped to found the company. Prior to this, Yass was a professional gambler.
Political activities
Yass became a member of the board of directors of the libertarian Cato Institute in 2002 and now is a member of the executive advisory council. In 2015, Yass donated $2.3 million to a Super PAC supporting Rand Paul‘s presidential candidacy. In 2018 he donated $3.8 million to the Club for Growth, and $20.7 million in 2020.
Yass and his wife, Janine Coslett, are public supporters of school choice, with Coslett writing a 2017 opinion piece for The Washington Examiner in support of then-incoming Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s views at school choice.
In November 2020, it was reported that Yass had donated $25.3 million, all to Republican candidates, and was one of the ten largest political donors in the US.
In March 2021, an investigation in Haaretz said that Jeff Yass and Arthur Dantchik were behind a large portion of the donations to the Kohelet Policy Forum in Israel.
In November 2021, he donated $5 million to the School Freedom Fund, a PAC that runs ads for Republican candidates running in the 2022 election cycle nationwide.
In June 2022 ProPublica claimed Yass has “avoided $1 billion in taxes” and “pouring his money into campaigns to cut taxes and support election deniers”.
Personal life
Yass is married to Janine Coslett. They have lived in Haverford in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania for some years. They have four children, two sons and two daughters.
In December 2001, following the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, he announced a donation to the charitable fund established by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to assist the victims. He has supported Save the Children, ”Spirit of Golf Foundation”, People’s Emergency Center Families First building, and the Franklin Institute‘s Franklin Family Funfest Committee
Milestones
- 1979 * After graduating moves to Las Vegas to pursue professional gambling.
- 1987 * Founds Susquehanna with friends from SUNY Binghamton.
- 1988 * Susquehanna makes about $30 million in its debut year.
- 2012 * Susquehanna makes an early investment in ByteDance.
- 2022 * Yass donates $1.9 million worth of Bitcoin to a political action committee.
