Bank of Cyprus’s vice chairman Wilbur Ross, the U.S. billionaire who led a group of investors in the bank’s recapitalisation in 2014, is a candidate for the office of the secretary of commerce in Donald Trump’s cabinet, the BBC reported on Wednesday without citing its source.
Ross, who served as an advisor to Trump during his election campaign, said at an event in Nicosia in June that even as standards of living across the world were “at an all-time high,” there was anger among voters because of inequality, immigration and excessive government. “Extremist candidates in the EU, Brexit, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the responders,” Ross had said five days following the UK referendum in which British voters decided to leave the European Union.
He also played down concerns about Trump’s temper then, saying that the US political system has various stages of checks and balances which make radical turns impossible and therefore any changes in policies would be “incremental”.
Trump, the Republican Party’s candidate, who stunned the world with his electoral victory as polls favoured the Democratic Party opponent, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is considered the most controversial presidential candidate in the country’s recent history. His divisive, xenophobic and misogynist comments caused widespread outrage both in the US and abroad. He proposed to expel all illegal immigrants, construct a wall at the US-Mexican border, cancel trade agreements, ban Moslems from entering the country and bragged about sexually harassing women.
Wilbur Ross, who specialises in investing in distressed companies and made profit from his investment in Bank of Ireland in 2014, told CNBC earlier this year that he decided to support Trump because the US needed “a more radical, new approach to government,” BBC reported. Some of the promises Trump made during the campaign should be viewed as “symbolic, more as metaphors,” BBC reported, citing Ross.
The American investor who skipped Bank of Cyprus’s annual general meeting in October for the first time since he got involved in the bank, was not immediately available for comment.
