White House to Woo Wall Street Dealmakers With $400,000 Jobs

 The Trump administration wants 400 dealmakers to help the US bolster its national security supply chains — and it's offering salaries as high as $400,000 a year for Wall Street recruits.

Under a new hiring initiative, the White House is targeting top dealmaking talent by dangling those potential salaries — which match the president's pay — with the promise that candidates won't have to shed their private-sector stock options.

The goal is to enlist the workers in helping the federal government develop financial agreements meant to cultivate critical supply chains and domestic industries critical for national security, according to administration officials who asked not to be named to speak more candidly about the program.

The effort seeks to address what one of the officials described as a major bottleneck — human capital — in government processing of a long queue of hundreds of potential projects worthy of evaluation. Highly skilled professionals can help the US move more quickly to deploy and invest taxpayer dollars wisely on projects that would help reindustrialize the country, the official said.

"For too long, the federal government has tried to shore up critical supply chain deficiencies in industries such as semiconductors, shipyards, and critical minerals without enough people with dealmaking experience in these strategic industries," US Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor said this month. "Under President Trump, that is changing."

Kupor himself has deep roots as an investor, previously serving as managing partner at prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The OPM initiative is aimed at finance professionals who specialize in structuring, negotiating and finalizing top-dollar business transactions — but who may be loathe to abandon stock options and other private-sector perks for relatively short-term stints in the federal government.

Federal pay scales top out at $197,200 annually for the civil service and $228,000 for senior executives. But new employees hired under the program would start at $253,100, what a cabinet secretary makes, and could draw the same salary as the president himself: $400,000.

Eligible recruits also wouldn't have to forfeit long-term benefits, in a shift that addresses a major barrier for anyone contemplating leaving the private sector for Washington. Instead, they'd be able to keep long-term compensation from their private-sector jobs, such as stock grants, options and carried interest.

A legal opinion from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in March concluded that those incentives don't violate ethics laws forbidding federal employees from having their taxpayer-paid salaries subsidized by outside companies.

The initiative comes as President Donald Trump pursues deals meant to strengthen US supply chains and the country's industrial base, including a critical mineral stockpile as well as equity investments in chipmaker Intel Corp. and critical mineral suppliers.

Those novel financial transactions have also exposed the need for more professionals within the federal government who can conduct due diligence in sectors such as critical minerals and help get deals across the finish line, one of the officials said.

The initiative seeks to lean on the expertise of deal managers, specialized lawyers and engineers to execute transactions that are essential to rebuild the nation's industrial base and promote US national security, the officials added. Although candidates could come from across the private sector, those working at hedge funds, investment banks and private equity firms are expected to be among key recruits.

The program is focused on federal agencies and institutions that are at the center of Trump's reindustrialization efforts, including the US International Development Finance Corp., and the Export-Import Bank, one of the officials said. Deal professionals could also be deployed at the Energy Department, the Commerce Department's chips office and the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital.

Temporary hires under the program could work as long as four years but generally would be seen serving for one- or two-year periods, one official said. The expectation is that individuals nominated from private-sector companies with leave programs for civil service would generally return to those firms. And, one official said, hopefully they'd also later keep in mind the national security implications of the decisions they make.

The temporary workers would still be subject to ethical constraints, including conflict-of-interest requirements that they recuse themselves from particular matters affecting the financial interest of their private-sector employers.

The effort builds on a presidential memorandum Trump signed last month that authorizes the use of existing powers to grant what's known as "critical pay authority" for as many as 400 positions supporting national-security related investments.

In March, the Office of Personnel Management proposed changes to that authority to allow even bigger paychecks, with a baseline salary of $253,100. Paying more than that amount currently requires specific approval by the president, but the administration has proposed getting rid of that rule.

If 400 new recruits received an average of $50,000 to $100,000 above that baseline, the office estimated the incremental cost to the government would be $20 million to $40 million per year.

The Trump administration has broadly sought to recruit temporary workers to fill some roles following its Elon Musk-spearheaded campaign to slash federal spending and the federal workforce. Under Trump, the US government has reduced non-postal employees roughly 14% from a 2024 peak under President Joe Biden.

The effort taps decades-old authority in federal law that's largely laid dormant. Only about 10 slots — out of 800 available for special treatment across the federal government — had recently been occupied, one of the officials said.

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/white-house-woo-wall-street-100002063.html