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During his Congressional career, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was well-known for raising large sums of money from Wall Street and fighting for its political priorities. So after his shocking primary defeat this June to a little-known challenger, it was widely expected that Cantor would take a lucrative Wall Street job.
And indeed, on Tuesday the investment bank Moelis & Company announced Tuesday that Cantor would join the firm as a vice chairman and managing director. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the firm's founder Ken Moelis said that Cantor wouldn't be just "a political figurehead" — he would instead be "a partner" and would open a new office for the firm in Washington, DC. Cantor will receive a multi-million dollar pay package over the next two years, according to an SEC filing flagged by Erik Schatzker of Bloomberg.
Cantor's victorious challenger Dave Brat campaigned, in part, on an anti-corporate, anti-Wall Street platform. "All the investment banks in the New York and DC — those guys should have gone to jail. Instead of going to jail, they went on Eric's Rolodex, and they are sending him big checks," Brat said during the campaign.
It looks like Cantor has put that Rolodex to good use. He told the Journal that he met Moelis about three years ago — soon after Cantor became Majority Leader — and that they began discussions about a job in July, just weeks after Cantor's loss. Cantor resigned his Congressional seat in August rather than serving out his term — all the better to get started at the bank quickly.
