Jared Kushner’s firm buys 8% stake in UK lender OakNorth, source says

(Reuters) -A private equity firm founded by U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has signed a deal to buy an 8% stake in British lender OakNorth, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The firm, Affinity Partners, was founded by Kushner in 2021 and has investments from funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The investment company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sky News, which previously reported the development, said that Affinity acquired the OakNorth stake from an unidentified existing investor.

OakNorth declined to comment. The SoftBank-backed group, founded by Rishi Khosla and Joel Perlman in 2015, has in the past leaned towards a U.S. listing to expand its business.

The news also comes amid growing interest around Trump and his affiliates’ business ventures and talks of the U.S. government possibly taking a stake in Intel.

OakNorth reported pretax profit of nearly 215 million pounds ($291.5 million) last year as it continued its expansion in the U.S., where it began operating by mid-2023 and has received licenses for a representative office in New York.

Sky News said the value of the Affinity-OakNorth transaction was unclear. Reports have said the British lender was valued at about $2.8 billion in its latest funding round in 2019.

OakNorth runs a business bank in Britain with more than 7.5 billion pounds in assets and supplies its technology to lenders elsewhere.

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In 2024, it had lent more than 2.1 billion pounds to customers. Its clients include F1 Arcade and personalised training provider Ultimate Performance.

"Despite ongoing macro-economic challenges, we are bullish for 2025," OakNorth co-founder and CEO Rishi Khosla said in March after the company’s 2024 report was published.

SoftBank did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

($1 = 0.7376 pounds)

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