Paul Atkins, Trump’s choice to steer the Securities and Exchanges Commission, is one more nominee with private ties to a billionaire household.
By Jemima McEvoy, Forbes Staff
Last week, President-elect Donald Trump nominated lawyer and financier Paul Atkins as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal government physique accountable for regulating public corporations and inventory markets within the U.S. Atkins, 66, beforehand served as an SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008 beneath former President George W. Bush. He has been touted by Trump as a “confirmed chief for frequent sense rules” and, crucially, a supporter of cryptocurrencies.
Despite his profession within the public eye, Atkins’ hyperlink to one of many wealthiest households within the Midwest has not been beforehand reported. His spouse Sarah Humphreys, whom he married in 1990, is the one granddaughter of Tamko Building Products founder E.L. Craig. An entrepreneur who had began and bought a number of ventures together with a boxing gymnasium and frozen custard store, Craig began the roofing enterprise in 1944 on the age of 69 in an outdated streetcar barn in Joplin, Missouri.
Now based mostly in Galena, Kansas, Tamko is the fourth largest producer of roofing shingles within the United States with $1.2 billion in income final 12 months, in line with a report from S&P Global.
The Humphreys household bought a 25% stake within the enterprise to the Carlyle Group, a $447 billion (belongings beneath administration) personal fairness agency, for an undisclosed sum in 2019. The household nonetheless owns a 75% stake in Tamko, which is known as after the primary 5 states the place the corporate deliberate to first do enterprise: Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. Bloomberg reported in April that the household and its minority investor could also be contemplating a sale valuing the enterprise at as much as $3.5 billion. An individual acquainted with the corporate says Tamko has turned down gives increased than that.
Tamko founder E.L. Craig and his spouse Mary Ethel Craig had only one youngster, Ethelmae Craig, who headed the corporate as its chairman for greater than three a long time. She was described as “the matriarch” of the now nationwide roofing enterprise on the time of her dying in 2021.
Ethelmae and her husband John Pershing Humphreys (d. 1993), who was Tamko’s president for a time, had three youngsters: David, John and Sarah. David and Sarah, and their respective spouses, now equally cut up the household’s 75% stake. Based on Forbes estimates of the enterprise, every household is value no less than $1 billion.
All 4 of them – Sarah and Paul Atkins in addition to David and Debra Humphreys – sit onTamko’s board with Carlyle representatives. The third Humphreys sibling, John, doesn’t have an possession stake and runs a separate roofing enterprise, DaVinci Roofscapes, in line with his LinkedIn web page.
David Humphreys took over as president and CEO in 1994 after his father’s dying. A libertarian who has given tens of millions to Missouri Republicans, David has additionally been an outspoken critic of Trump. “At some level you simply must look within the mirror and acknowledge you can not probably justify help for Trump,” David advised The Independent in 2016. After the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, David declared his practically $3 million in previous donations to Sen. Josh Hawley (R -Miss.), a outstanding backer of Trump’s false claims that he misplaced the election resulting from widespread fraud, as “the worst mistake I ever made in my life.” He additionally funds the Joplin, Missouri-based EL Craig Foundation, a $7 million (belongings) charity that helps conservative organizations and assume tanks just like the Institute for Humane Studies, a nonprofit that promotes the examine of classical liberalism in faculties.
Sarah has served on Tamko’s board for greater than 1 / 4 century, and can also be an energetic political donor. She’s given no less than $7.7 million since 2002 – nearly all to Republicans – in line with knowledge from OpenSecrets. Sarah is the president and single largest donor to the J. P. Humphreys Foundation. Also based mostly in Joplin, this charitable basis provides away roughly $3 million a 12 months largely to conservative teams together with The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and the Cato Institute, a free market-Washington, D.C. assume tank the place her brother David is a board member. Sarah has given greater than $33 million to the J.P. Humphreys Foundation since 2010, in line with public filings.
Her husband Paul Atkins is a director at each Sarah’s and David’s foundations; he has additionally loved a profitable profession in his personal proper. A North Carolina native, he started working in company regulation at New York City’s Davis Polk & Wardwell in 1984, the identical agency the place David Humphreys labored earlier than becoming a member of Tamko as basic counsel in 1989. After his stint as an SEC commissioner beneath Bush, Atkins launched Patomak Global Partners, a consulting agency that makes a speciality of advising monetary providers corporations together with banks and crypto corporations on regulatory compliance, in 2009. The agency is positioned in Washington, D.C., a block away from the White House.
Atkins and the Humphreys have had overlapping enterprise pursuits up to now. Atkins was listed as a director at three completely different offshore entities both owned or affiliated with the Humphreys household. That’s in line with knowledge made public as a part of the 2016 Panama Papers, a leak of greater than 11.5 million paperwork from Panamanian regulation agency Mossack Fonseca, which assisted purchasers with organising offshore corporations and different entities.
The three Humphreys-linked entities – EQB Offshore Ltd., Midwest Insurance Company Ltd. and Tamcap Insurance Ltd. – had been registered in Bermuda in between 2000 and 2008. Both EQB Offshore Ltd. and Midwest Insurance Company Ltd., which seem like affiliated, had been owned by trusts named for Sarah and David and served as “captive insurance coverage corporations” offering insurance coverage insurance policies to Tamko Building Products, the particular person acquainted with the corporate stated. (These outfits had been taxed as U.S. firms and paid U.S. taxes till 2019 once they had been discontinued, in line with the supply.) EQB has been liquidated, whereas the opposite two entities are dormant. Atkins and his spouse Sarah served as administrators in any respect three till 2013.
According to S&P Global analyst Marc Lazo, who covers Tamko’s debt, the Humphreys have been “considerably aggressive” in comparison with their friends in paying hefty dividends. S&P calculates that the agency’s house owners will distribute no less than $100 million in dividends to themselves this 12 months, or about 90% to 95% of the corporate’s free money circulation. In 2021, Tamko’s house owners paid themselves a $250 million dividend, in line with an S&P report from the time.
As a pair, Atkins and his spouse definitely seem to benefit from the trappings of wealth. In addition to an almost $3 million residence in Arlington, Virginia, property data present that they personal an $8 million (estimated value) 6,000 sq. foot seashore home constructed alongside three adjoining parcels on Anna Maria island simply off the Florida coast about an hour from Sarasota.
While he’s not himself a billionaire, Atkins is one in all no less than a dozen billionaires, billionaire spouses or members of billionaire households (some by marriage) who’ve been nominated by Trump for all the pieces from cupboard positions to ambassadors. Others embody: Jared Isaacman (NASA), Charles Kushner (Ambassador to France), Howard Lutnick (Commerce Secretary), Warren Stephens (Ambassador to the UK), Tilman Fertitta (Ambassador to Italy), Kelly Loeffler (Small Business Administration), Linda McMahon (Secretary of Education), Elon Musk (co-head of DOGE), Mehmet Oz (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid), Vivek Ramaswamy (co-head of DOGE) and Steve Witkoff (particular Middle East envoy).
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