Bankers aren’t typically required to wear a uniform, but for a while, many did: a dark Patagonia vest with a dress shirt and slacks.
The look was so widely associated with finance that it developed a nickname, the “Midtown Uniform,” a reference to the New York City neighborhood known for its many investment banks and law firms. It even had an Instagram account with 168,000 followers.
If only they had known how much Patagonia’s founder disliked corporate America.
“I don’t respect the stock market at all,” Yvon Chouinard, the founder, told me. “Once you’re public, you’ve lost control over the company, and you have to maximize profits for the shareholder. You lose all control, and then you become one of these irresponsible companies.”
As I detail in my new book, “Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away,” Chouinard, 86, started out as a rock climber and a blacksmith, and from an early age regarded businessmen as “greaseballs.”
When he unexpectedly found himself at the helm of a successful clothing company, it provoked an identity crisis of sorts. Even when he couldn’t make payroll, Chouinard refused to accept outside investments or consider an initial public offering. He declined offers to sell the company to Berkshire Hathaway and Ralph Lauren, and early on turned down the promise of a $100 million payday if he let the investment bank Robertson Stephens lead an I.P.O.
Although he ultimately became a billionaire himself, Chouinard boasted of his children that “both believe that billionaires represent a policy failure,” adding: “They were brought up right.”
Patagonia pared back sales to financial and tech firms in 2019, uncomfortable with having its products become hot commodities on Wall Street. Many of those Patagonia vests were issued to interns on orientation day and tossed aside a few months later when the interns moved on to a new job. That kind of disposable mind-set was antithetical to Chouinard, who wanted to make things that lasted a lifetime.
It wasn’t the first time he had deliberately throttled the company’s growth, fearing that it would be impossible to scale the business without compromising his high environmental and ethical standards. In 2011, Patagonia ran an ad in The New York Times that read “Don’t Buy This Jacket.”
And still, the company kept getting bigger, establishing a reputation as a small corporation with a big cultural influence.
Forbes magazine placed Chouinard on its annual list of billionaires in 2017, pegging his net worth at a cool $1 billion.
It made Chouinard livid. “It really, really pissed me off,” he said.
His reaction stood in sharp contrast to most American billionaires, many of whom flaunt their fortunes. But material possessions never meant much to Chouinard, who still lives in a log cabin cluttered with secondhand furniture and cooks off the same cast iron skillet he’s had for 50 years.
In 2022, determined to get off the Forbes list, Chouinard resolved to get rid of his wealth once and for all. He considered selling to a like-minded billionaire, handing ownership of the company over to its employees or reincorporating in Switzerland or Denmark, countries that accommodate charitable corporations.
But none of those options satisfied all of Chouinard’s requirements, which included ridding himself of his billionaire status, protecting the integrity of Patagonia and funneling more money to causes like conservation.
In the end, he and his family took the unusual step of giving away their equity in Patagonia to a new series of trusts and nonprofit organizations that now distribute the company’s profits to environmental activism. (Critics accused them of dodging taxes.)
It was a complex transaction, full of legal intricacies and complex paperwork, and Chouinard and his team didn’t do it alone.
Rather, to figure out how to get the deal done, they hired a merchant bank, BDT — just the kind of place where you’d find analysts wearing the Midtown Uniform.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The Murdoch family settled a yearslong feud over the future of its media empire. Rupert Murdoch’s elder son, Lachlan, has cemented his place as leader of the powerful conservative media outlet after the family agreed to a multibillion-dollar deal. Three Murdoch siblings — Prue, Liz and James — will get $1.1 billion each for their shares in the family business in return for ending their succession fight.
The Ellison family is said to be eyeing a megamedia roll-up. A deal would combine Paramount Global, the media group controlled by David Ellison, with Warner Bros. Discovery — potentially bringing CNN, CBS News, HBO Max and Paramount Plus under one roof. Shares of both companies rose on the report. It was a momentous week for Ellison’s father, Larry, a co-founder of Oracle, who briefly became the world’s wealthiest man after the tech giant reported a knockout forecast.
Traders upped the odds for interest-rate cuts. The futures market was forecasting yesterday that the Federal Reserve would lower its benchmark lending-rate three times this year after jobless claims rose to a four-year high. That’s even though the Consumer Price Index on Thursday showed inflation on a re-accelerating path. Another factor: The Trump administration moved a step closer to getting Stephen Miran, a close adviser to the president, nominated to the central bank in time for next week’s meeting.
Other big deals: Oracle said it had added hundreds of billions of dollars in future contract revenue during its most recent quarter, sending its shares skyrocketing (and briefly making its co-founder Larry Ellison the world’s richest person). OpenAI took a big step toward reorganizing as a for-profit. Giorgio Armani’s will directs heirs to sell an initial 15 percent stake in his company within 18 months. And Air Taxis get another boost from President Trump.
Kentucky’s governor wants Democrats to get real
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Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky is comfortable sitting in contradictions.
A Democrat, he has twice found a way to win over deep-red Kentucky, which broke for President Trump by a 30-point margin in 2024. He recently started the “Andy Beshear Podcast,” which frequently hosts conversations with politicians and, he insists, isn’t political.
And he has become a force for renewable energy development in his coal state. Under his watch over the last six years, Kentucky has attracted two electric vehicle battery plants totaling $8 billion in investment. In August, the governor scored another clean energy victory, securing a $2 billion investment from Ford Motor to remake its Louisville plant into an electric truck hub.
Those investments have helped counter the nearly 15,000 coal jobs lost in the state since 2011. But Beshear’s clean energy agenda faces mounting hurdles. President Trump has pushed forward policies that undercut the electric vehicle industry, creating uncertainty that contributed to a halt hiring at one of Kentucky’s electric vehicle battery plants.
Beshear spoke to DealBook about his plans to make Kentucky an E.V. powerhouse, whether a 2028 presidential run is on the horizon and what can be done about the rise in political violence. The interview has been condensed and edited.
The Trump administration has cut the federal government’s $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicles, and many analysts expect sales to dip after it expires. Why make a bet on electric vehicles now?
A lot of people have tried to fight the future, and none of them have ever won. E.V.s are coming. They will be a significant part, if not a dominant part, of the automotive economy.
When I look at the rollback of the E.V. credits, yes, I’m disappointed with the president, but I’m really disappointed with Kentucky Representative Brett Guthrie, who pushed that bill through the House. Guthrie has both Kentucky’s BlueOval battery plant, which will employ 5,000 people, and the Envision plant, which will employ 2,000 people, in his district.
Ford delayed production of its electric truck at the BlueOval plant to 2028. What makes you confident Ford’s latest investment in the state will go through?
You don’t build a multibillion-dollar facility if you’re not going to use it. Ford has repeatedly assured me that it’s only a matter of when, and not a matter of if. I take them at their word. I believe the private sector is showing people very clearly that the economy is and will continue to head in the E.V. direction.
Beyond the electric vehicle industry, President Trump’s tariffs have dealt a blow to your state’s bourbon industry, which produces 95 percent of the world’s bourbon.
The other 5 percent is counterfeit.
Ha. Many Canadian provinces have stopped importing alcoholic beverages from the U.S. The European Union has threatened retaliatory tariffs, including on Kentucky bourbon. What does that mean for Kentucky bourbon makers?
Donald Trump’s tariff policy is the most destructive economic policy I’ve seen in my lifetime. What’s happening with bourbon is both the result of tariffs and the president’s misguided foreign policy. So tariffs are impacting the E.U., and the countermeasures that we’re seeing with bourbon in Canada, it’s primarily that the president has insulted them over and over.
Your podcast was recently picked up by SiriusXM. You’ve said that the show is meant to demonstrate a kind of realness you don’t often see in politicians. What do you mean by that?
Oftentimes all you see from a governor or a senator or even a C.E.O. are their policies. But we need to see each other more as human beings, especially right now.
When we get there, we can create grace and space to disagree on some things, but come together on others. So when I describe the reason that I veto anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation, I talk about it being because of my faith. I believe all children are children of God and we shouldn’t be picking on them. That provides a different way that people can hear someone who is disagreeing with them, and help them recognize that they’re maybe doing it for the right reasons.
Do you think Democrats are going to need more of that realness in 2028?
Democrats need to communicate across as many new platforms as possible and haven’t. That’s why I think that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast is really important. Mine tries not to be an overly political voice. I want to make sure it’s a place where people can come and process all this complicated, difficult news.
Are you planning to run in 2028?
Right now I’m out there trying to be a reasonable voice in the chaos, to be a voice of common sense, common ground and getting things done. Next year, I’m fully committed to this job as governor and being the head of the Democratic Governors Association. And then after that, we’ll sit down with my family and I, and we’ll consider it.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Wednesday. His killing is the latest incident in a surge of political violence. I’m wondering what you think can be done to address this trend.
What happened yesterday is awful. Leaders have a choice right now to say that violence is wrong no matter who it’s perpetrated against, or to say violence is wrong when it’s perpetrated against people like me or that I agree with now. Now is the time to take the stand to say all of it’s wrong and all of it has to end.
Quiz: I. now, P.O. later
The payment company Klarna had a solid public debut this week, with its shares popping 14 percent on the first day of trading. That’s good news for those hoping for an I.P.O. market comeback, wrote DealBook’s Michael J. de la Merced.
Klarna, best known for buy-now-pay-later loans, is now worth around $16 billion. What is the highest valuation at which the 20-year-old company raised money in the private market, back in 2021?
A. $6.7 billion
B. $45.6 billion
C. $85 billion
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you Monday.
We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
Quiz answer: B.
David Gelles reports on climate change and leads The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series.
The post The Irony of Corporate America’s Many Patagonia Vests appeared first on New York Times.
