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=                          Vivek Ramaswamy                           =
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                             Introduction                             
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Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy (; ; born August 9, 1985) is an American
entrepreneur. He founded Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company,
in 2014. In February 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the
Republican Party nomination in the 2024 United States presidential
election. He suspended his campaign in January 2024, after finishing
fourth in the Iowa caucuses.

Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati to Indian immigrant parents. He
graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in biology and
later earned a law degree from Yale Law School. Ramaswamy worked as an
investment partner at a hedge fund before founding Roivant Sciences.
He also co-founded an investment firm, Strive Asset Management.

Ramaswamy sees the United States in the middle of a national identity
crisis precipitated by what he calls "new secular religions like
COVID-ism, climate-ism, and gender ideology". He is also a critic of
environmental, social, and corporate governance initiatives (ESG). In
January 2024, 'Forbes' estimated Ramaswamy's net worth at more than
$960 million; his wealth comes from biotech and financial businesses.


                       Early life and education                       
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Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy was born on August 9, 1985, in Cincinnati,
Ohio, to Indian Hindu immigrant parents. His parents are
Tamil-speaking Brahmins from Kerala. His father, V. Ganapathy
Ramaswamy, a graduate of the National Institute of Technology Calicut,
worked as an engineer and patent attorney for General Electric, while
his mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, a graduate of the Mysore Medical College
& Research Institute, worked as a geriatric psychiatrist. His
parents immigrated from Palakkad district in Kerala, where the family
had an ancestral home in a traditional agraharam in the town of
Vadakkencherry.

Ramaswamy was raised in Ohio. Growing up, Ramaswamy often attended the
local Hindu temple in Dayton with his family. His conservative
Christian piano teacher, who gave him private lessons from elementary
through high school, also influenced his social views. He spent many
summer vacations traveling to India with his parents. In high school,
Ramaswamy was a nationally ranked tennis player.


 Education 
===========
Ramaswamy attended public schools through eighth grade. He then
attended Cincinnati's St. Xavier High School, a Catholic school
affiliated with the Jesuit order, graduating as valedictorian in 2003.

In 2007, Ramaswamy graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor
of Arts, 'summa cum laude', in biology, and was a member of Phi Beta
Kappa. At Harvard, he gained a reputation as a brash and confident
libertarian. He was a member of the Harvard Political Union, becoming
its president. He told 'The Harvard Crimson' that he considered
himself a contrarian who loved to debate. While in college, he
performed Eminem covers and libertarian-themed rap music under the
stage name and alter ego "Da Vek", and was an intern for the hedge
fund Amaranth Advisors and the investment bank Goldman Sachs. He wrote
his senior thesis on the ethical questions raised by creating
human-animal chimeras and earned a Bowdoin Prize.

In 2011, Ramaswamy was awarded a post-graduate fellowship by the Paul
& Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which he used to
attend Yale Law School. Later, Ramaswamy said that by the time he
attended Yale, he was already wealthy from his activities in the
finance, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries; he said in 2023 that
he had a net worth of around $15 million before graduating from law
school. At Yale he befriended fellow Ohio native and future U.S.
Senator J. D. Vance. He earned a Juris Doctor in 2013. In a 2023
interview, Ramaswamy said that he was a member of the campus Jewish
intellectual discussion society Shabtai while a law student.


 Early career 
==============
In 2007, Ramaswamy and Travis May co-founded Campus Venture Network,
which published a private social networking website for university
students who aspired to launch a business. The company was sold to the
nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 2009.

Ramaswamy worked at the hedge fund QVT Financial from 2007 to 2014. He
was a partner and co-managed the firm's biotech portfolio. QVT's
biotech investments under Ramaswamy included stakes in Palatin
Technologies, Concert Pharmaceuticals, Pharmasset, and Martin
Shkreli's Retrophin. In a 2023 speech and in his book 'Woke Inc.',
Ramaswamy called Shkreli, whose company had greatly increased the cost
of a life-saving drug, both "brilliant" and a pathological liar. He
criticized the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecuting Shkreli,
calling his fraud a victimless crime.


 Roivant Sciences and subsidiaries 
===================================
In 2014, Ramaswamy founded the biotechnology firm Roivant Sciences;
the "Roi" in the company's name refers to return on investment. The
company was incorporated in Bermuda, a tax haven, and received almost
$100 million in start-up capital from QVT and other investors,
including RA Capital Management, Visium Asset Management, and the
hedge fund managers D. E. Shaw & Co. and Falcon Edge Capital.
Roivant's strategy was to purchase patents from larger pharmaceutical
companies for drugs that had not yet been successfully developed, and
then bring them to the market. The company created numerous
subsidiaries, including Dermavant (focused on dermatology), Urovant
(focused on urological disease), and China-based Sinovant and
Cytovant, focused on the Asian market.

In 2015, Ramaswamy raised $360 million for the Roivant subsidiary
Axovant Sciences in an attempt to market intepirdine as a drug for
Alzheimer's disease. In December 2014, Axovant purchased the patent
for intepirdine from GlaxoSmithKline (where the drug had failed four
previous clinical trials) for $5 million, a small sum in the industry.
Ramaswamy appeared on the cover of 'Forbes' in 2015, and said his
company would "be the highest return on investment endeavor ever taken
up in the pharmaceutical industry." Before new clinical trials began,
he engineered an initial public offering (IPO) in Axovant. Axovant
became a "Wall Street darling" and raised $315 million in its IPO. The
company's market value initially soared to almost $3 billion, although
at the time it only had eight employees, including Ramaswamy's brother
and mother. Ramaswamy took a massive payout after selling a portion of
his shares in Roivant to Viking Global Investors. He claimed more than
$37 million in capital gains in 2015. Ramaswamy said his company would
be the "Berkshire Hathaway of drug development" and touted the drug as
a "tremendous" opportunity that "could help millions" of patients,
prompting some criticism that he was overpromising.

In September 2017, the company announced that intepirdine had failed
in its large clinical trial. The company's value plunged; it lost 75%
in one day and continued to decline afterward. Shareholders who lost
money included various institutional investors, such as the California
State Teachers' Retirement System pension fund. Ramaswamy was
insulated from much of Axovant's losses because he held his stake
through Roivant. The company abandoned intepirdine. In 2018, Ramaswamy
said he had no regrets about how the company handled the drug; in
subsequent years, he said he regretted the outcome but was annoyed by
criticism of the company. Axovant attempted to reinvent itself as a
gene therapy company, but dissolved in 2023.

In 2017, Roivant partnered with the private equity arm of the Chinese
state-owned CITIC Group to form Sinovant. In 2017, Ramaswamy struck a
deal with Masayoshi Son in which SoftBank invested $1.1 billion in
Roivant. In 2019, Roivant sold its stake in five subsidiaries (or
"vants"), including Enzyvant, to Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma; Ramaswamy
made $175 million in capital gains from the sale. The deal also gave
Sumitomo Dainippon a 10% stake in Roivant.

While campaigning for the presidency, Ramaswamy called himself a
"scientist" and said, "I developed a number of medicines." His
undergraduate degree is in biology, but he was never a scientist; his
role in the biotechnology industry was that of a financier and
entrepreneur.

In January 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant Sciences and
assumed the role of executive chairman. In 2021, after he resigned as
CEO, Roivant was listed on the Nasdaq via a reverse merger with Montes
Archimedes Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition vehicle. In
February 2023, Ramaswamy stepped down as chair of Roivant to focus on
his presidential campaign.

Ramaswamy remains the sixth-largest shareholder of Roivant, retaining
a 7.17% stake. Roivant has never been profitable.


 Roivant Social Ventures 
=========================
In 2020, when Ramaswamy was CEO of Roivant Sciences, the company
established a nonprofit social-impact arm, Roivant Social Ventures
(RSV), with his support. An earlier iteration of RSV, the Roivant
Foundation, was created in 2018. Although Ramaswamy's presidential
campaign centers on opposing corporate diversity, equity, and
inclusion (DEI) and environmental, social, and corporate governance
(ESG) initiatives, RSV worked in support of pro-DEI and ESG
initiatives, including promoting health equity and diversity within
the biopharma and biotech industries. While campaigning, Ramaswamy has
downplayed his role in creating and overseeing RSV.


 Other ventures 
================
In 2020, Ramaswamy co-founded Chapter Medicare, a Medicare navigation
platform. He served on the Ohio COVID-19 Response Team.

He was chairman of OnCore Biopharma, a position he maintained at
Tekmira Pharmaceuticals when the two companies merged in March 2015.
He also was chair of the board of Arbutus Biopharma, a Canadian firm.

In May 2024, Ramaswamy acquired a 7.7% stake in BuzzFeed, later
increased to 8.4%, making him the second-largest Class A shareholder
in the company. Soon after the acquisition, he sent a letter to the
company's board of directors, in which he suggested they hire
conservative pundits such as Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Bill
Maher, as well as three "high-profile directors, with strong track
business records in new media" whom he knew. Analysts have predicted
that his direction could seriously shift BuzzFeed's content and
editorial approach.


 Activism and Strive Asset Management 
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In early 2022, together with his high school friend Anson Frericks,
Ramaswamy co-founded Strive Asset Management, a Columbus, Ohio-based
asset management firm. The firm raised about $20 million from outside
investors, including Peter Thiel, J. D. Vance, and Bill Ackman.

Strive has branded itself as "anti-woke" and its funds as "anti-ESG";
Ramaswamy has claimed that the largest asset managers, such as
BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, mix business with ESG politics
to the detriment of their funds' investors.

Pension fund managers take account of ESG in the assessment of
long-term risk, including climate risks, when making portfolio
decisions.  Ramaswamy has crusaded against ESG and emphasizes the
doctrine of shareholder primacy, famously articulated by Milton
Friedman. In his book 'Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social
Justice Scam' and elsewhere, he has depicted private corporations'
socially conscious investing as simultaneously ineffective and the
greatest threat to American society. He published a second book,
'Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the
Path Back to Excellence', in September 2022, a few months before
announcing his presidential candidacy.

Strive's flagship fund, the exchange-traded fund DRLL, launched in
2022 as an "anti-woke" energy sector index fund. Ramaswamy said that
Strive would push energy companies to drill for more oil, frack for
more natural gas, and "do whatever allows them to be most successful
over the long run without regard to political, social, cultural or
environmental agendas."

In October 2022, Ramaswamy held closed-door meetings with South
Carolina lawmakers in a session arranged by state treasurer Curtis
Loftis; during the meetings, Ramaswamy pitched Strive to manage South
Carolina pension funds. In June 2023, after 'The Post and Courier'
reported on the meetings, the sessions were criticized as a form of
unregistered lobbying; Ramaswamy's campaign manager denied any
impropriety.

Ramaswamy was Strive's executive chairman before resigning in February
2023 to focus on his presidential campaign.


 Early political involvement 
=============================
Ramaswamy said that he voted for Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian
Party presidential nominee in 2004, but did not vote in the
presidential elections in 2008, 2012, or 2016. He described himself as
apolitical during this period. He supported Donald Trump in the 2020
election. In November 2021, Ramaswamy registered to vote in Franklin
County, Ohio, as "unaffiliated", but described himself as a
Republican.

Ramaswamy has made political contributions to both Democrats and
Republicans. In 2016, he donated $2,700 to the campaign of Dena
Grayson, a Florida Democrat running for Congress. From 2020 to 2023,
he donated $30,000 to the Ohio Republican Party. Ramaswamy considered
running in the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Ohio.


 Campaign 
==========
On February 21, 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the
Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2024 on
'Tucker Carlson Tonight'. He publicly released 20 years of his
individual income tax returns and called upon his rivals in the
primary to do the same. His fortune had made up the vast majority of
his campaign's fundraising. From February to July 2023, Ramaswamy
loaned his campaign more than $15 million; his campaign ended the
second quarter of 2023 with about $9 million in cash on hand. His
fundraising lagged far behind Trump's and Ron DeSantis's, but ahead of
most of the other Republican primary candidates'.

During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination,
Ramaswamy sought to appeal to evangelical Christian right and
Christian nationalist voters, an important part of the Republican
base, some of whom are reluctant or unwilling to support a
non-Christian presidential candidate such as Ramaswamy, who is Hindu.
In campaign stops and interviews, Ramaswamy had criticized secularism,
saying that the U.S. was founded on Christian values or
Judeo-Christian values; that he shares those values; and that he
believes in one God.

While campaigning, Ramaswamy called himself an "unapologetic American
nationalist"; he often attacked DeSantis but has avoided directly
criticizing Trump.

In May 2023, Ramaswamy's campaign admitted that he had paid an editor
to alter his Wikipedia biography before announcing his candidacy but
denied that the payment for edits was politically motivated. The edits
to the Wikipedia biography removed references to Ramaswamy's
postgraduate fellowship from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for
New Americans, as well as his involvement with the Ohio COVID-19
Response Team. Paul and Daisy Soros are the elder brother and
sister-in-law, respectively, of businessman and social activist George
Soros, who has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories among
American conservatives and rightists. Ramaswamy's campaign denied
attempting to "scrub" his Wikipedia page and argued the edits were
revisions of "factual distortions."

After the 2024 Iowa caucuses, Ramaswamy ended his campaign and
endorsed Donald Trump.


 Political positions 
=====================
Although they were running against each other for the 2024 Republican
nomination, Ramaswamy vocally supported Trump. After Trump was
indicted on federal criminal charges in 2023, Ramaswamy immediately
rallied behind him. He promised to pardon Trump if elected president.
He has also promised to pardon Julian Assange, Ross Ulbricht, and
Edward Snowden. He suggested that he might consider Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. as a possible running mate.


 Executive power and social/economic policy 
============================================
Ramaswamy opposed affirmative action, and vowed to rescind Executive
Order 11246. He argued that American-style capitalism provides an
antidote to India's caste system. He asserted that critical race
theory has indoctrinated students in public schools.

Ramaswamy opposed abortion, terming it "murder". He supported
state-level six-week abortion bans, with exceptions for rape, incest,
and danger to the woman's life, but opposes a federal ban.

Ramaswamy called the LGBTQ movement a "cult". He said through a
spokesman that he believes same-sex marriage is "settled precedent"
but supported broad restrictions on the rights of transgender
Americans, and used anti-trans rhetoric.

Ramaswamy pledged, if elected, to rule by executive fiat to a degree
unprecedented among modern U.S. presidents. He pledged to fire 75% of
federal employees; dismantle civil service protections, making federal
employment at-will; and abolish at least five federal agencies,
including the Education Department, FBI, ATF, IRS, Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, and USDA's Food and Nutrition Service. He called the Food
and Drug Administration "corrupt" and vowed to "expose and ultimately
gut" the FDA. He asserted that the president has the unilateral power
to abolish agencies by executive order, although executive agencies
and departments are created by statute, and under the Constitution,
Congress has the power of the purse. He called for an eight-year term
for all government employees and pledged to revoke Executive Order
10988, an order issued by President John F. Kennedy that gives federal
employees the right to collectively bargain. He proposed to repeal the
federal law that requires presidents to spend all the money Congress
appropriates.

Ramaswamy favored raising the standard voting age to 25, which would
require repealing the 26th Amendment to the Constitution. This
proposal would have disenfranchised a portion of the U.S. electorate;
nearly 9% of voters in the 2020 general election were under 25.
Ramaswamy also said he would have liked to end birthright citizenship.
He said he would have allow citizens between 18 and 24 to vote only if
they are enlisted in the military, work as first responders, or pass
the civics test required for naturalization. He supported making
Election Day a federal holiday, while eliminating Juneteenth (which he
called "useless" and "redundant") as a federal holiday.

Ramaswamy pledged to "use our military to annihilate the Mexican drug
cartels". He favored federal legalization of marijuana. He took no
public position on the 2017 Trump tax cuts. In a thought experiment he
expressed support for an inheritance tax, and called for ending the
Federal Reserve's dual mandate, but during his presidential campaign
he expressed opposition to an inheritance tax.


 Promotion of conspiracy theories 
==================================
In Republican primary debates and campaign appearances, Ramaswamy
often repeated and promoted an array of right-wing conspiracy theories
and falsehoods. In the days after the January 6, 2021, attack on the
Capitol, he condemned the attack, but argued that social media bans on
Trump violate the First Amendment. Later, while running for president,
Ramaswamy repeatedly claimed that the January 6 attack "was an inside
job", a claim supported by no evidence and refuted by numerous
investigations. He also asserted that "big tech" stole the 2020
election and that the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory was "the
Democratic Party's platform". Invoking September 11 conspiracy
theories, he asked whether "federal agents were on the planes" that
hit the Twin Towers during the September 11 attacks. When asked about
some of his past remarks, Ramaswamy frequently denied making the
comments or claimed to have been misquoted, even when those denials
were belied by recordings, transcripts, or extracts from his book.


 Foreign affairs 
=================
Ramaswamy said he would not have used U.S. military force against
Iran. In November 2023, he condemned Azerbaijan's military operation
against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and said that the
U.S. should block all its military aid to Azerbaijan.

Ramaswamy said he favored "some major concessions to Russia, including
freezing those current lines of control in a Korean-war style
armistice agreement" to end the Russo-Ukrainian War. He favored ending
U.S. military aid to Ukraine, excluding Ukraine from NATO, and
allowing Russia to remain in occupied regions of Ukraine in exchange
for an agreement that Russia end its alliance with China. He expressed
support for Taiwanese independence, and floated the idea of "putting a
gun in every Taiwanese household" to deter an invasion by China, but
said the U.S. should not militarily defend Taiwan from Chinese attack
after the U.S. has achieved "semiconductor independence", which he
pledged to achieve by 2028.

After Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Ramaswamy supported
Israel's right to defend itself and to make its own decisions while
suggesting that the U.S. should provide a "diplomatic Iron Dome" for
Israel.  Regarding the U.S. aid to Israel, he said that it should be
contingent upon Israel's plans for defeating Hamas and its actions in
Gaza.


 Climate and energy 
====================
Although he said he was not a climate denier, Ramaswamy said in a
Republican primary debate that "the climate change agenda is a hoax"
and asserted, falsely, that "more people are dying from climate
policies than actual climate change." At other times, he said that he
accepted that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, but called
global climate change "not entirely bad"; said that "people should be
proud to live a high-carbon lifestyle"; and said that the U.S. should
"drill, frack, burn coal". He criticized what he calls the "climate
cult" and said that as president, he would "abandon the anticarbon
framework as it exists" and halt "any mandate to measure carbon
dioxide". In 2022, he urged Chevron to increase oil production and
criticized its support for a carbon tax. Ramaswamy's company holds a
0.02% stake in Chevron. Ramaswamy opposed subsidies for electric
vehicles. In his arguments, Ramaswamy used incorrect statistical
claims about the history of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. His
critics said that when he cited the upsides of climate change and
fossil fuels, such as reduced cold-related deaths, cheap energy, and
faster plant growth, he ignored larger downsides, such as increases in
other weather-related disasters, deaths, and plant damage, and ignored
that there are now less-polluting sources of cheap energy.


                            Personal life                             
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Ramaswamy's wife, Apoorva Tewari Ramaswamy, is a laryngologist and
surgeon; they met at Yale, when he was studying law and she was
studying medicine. They married in 2015 and have two sons. Ramaswamy
has a younger brother, Shankar, who worked for him at Axovant and
later co-founded Kriya Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company.

Ramaswamy is a monotheistic Hindu. According to relatives, he is
fluent in Tamil and understands (but does not speak) Malayalam. He is
a vegetarian and wrote in 2020, "I believe it is wrong to kill
sentient animals for culinary pleasure". According to his parents, he
has tried to develop a good understanding of both eastern and western
culture and traditions.

In 2023, Ramaswamy's campaign advisor said his net worth was more than
$1 billion; 'Forbes' estimated it at more than $950 million. He lived
in Manhattan as of 2016. As of 2021, he owned a house in Butler
County, Ohio, but in 2023, the only real estate he reported owning was
a house in Columbus, Ohio, in Franklin County. A 2023 'Politico'
profile of Ramaswamy mentions him living in a $2 million estate in the
Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.


                            External links                            
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* [https://www.vivek2024.com 2024 presidential campaign website]
*

* [https://www.politifact.com/personalities/vivek-ramaswamy/ Vivek
Ramaswamy] on Politifact


 License 
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Ramaswamy


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