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How an Obscure Firm Bet on the Trumps and Became Their Go-To Dealmaker

Dominari was new to the finance game when it took office space in Trump Tower; now it’s a key adviser on the first family’s ventures, from crypto to manufacturing

In order to become a trusted financial partner of the world’s most powerful family, it helps to buy low.

That partly explains how a tiny onetime biotech firm with nearly a quarter-billion in accumulated losses transformed into something of an in-house investment bank for the Trump family’s business empire, handling everything from crypto to manufacturing deals.

The unusual ascent of the firm now known as Dominari Holdings DOMH 2.03%increase; green up pointing triangle began in 2021. Donald Trump’s approval ratings had tanked following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that year. Democratic lawmakers and prosecutors were probing Trump and his company over what would become a slew of criminal and civil charges. Virtually no one on Wall Street was betting on Trump.

Around the same time, Dominari Chief Executive Anthony Hayes was pondering a jump from the hit-or-miss work of drug development to the rough-and-tumble world of finance. He brought pal and Wall Street veteran Kyle Wool onto his board, and together they soon sought out bigger office space for their operation.

They could have gone anywhere, but decided on a then-infamous piece of Manhattan real estate. “If we’re going to do something and we’re going to build it from scratch, what about we grab a little space in Trump Tower?” Hayes said in a recent interview.

The choice was made with a larger plan in mind. Trump’s unlikely political comeback fueled an explosion of new business for his family, renewing criticisms that they are profiting off America’s highest office and the connections that come with it. The burst of activity has created opportunities for a host of advisers like Dominari who for the most part weren’t blue-chip names on Wall Street.

Cantor Fitzgerald, now led in part by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons, has advised Trump Media on a plan to buy billions in bitcoin. New Jersey-based Yorkville Advisors was retained to help manage Trump-branded exchange-traded funds. After acting as a sounding board for Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. on their own investments, Dominari has become a go-to dealmaker for the scions. It was a key player in the creation of a Trump-backed bitcoin-mining firm as well as an ongoing attempt to take a U.S. manufacturer public.

The firm’s move into the inner circle didn’t happen overnight. Hayes and Wool began bumping into the sons soon after setting up shop in Trump Tower. Charity golf tournaments and meals with mutual friends helped solidify the relationship.

An avid golfer, Wool has previously hit the links with hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, who is credited with advising players to skate where the puck is going, not where it has been. Dominari’s executives frequently cite that cliché in describing their focus on emerging technologies like crypto and AI. But on Wall Street, where relationships translate to money and power, the concept also applies to making the right friends at the right time.

“Do they dictate to us what we do? Absolutely not,” said Hayes, 57 years old. “Do Eric and Don have relationships that we are able to kind of help leverage to make our deals better? Yes.”

With brokers working the phones just a few stories beneath the president’s sons, Dominari in recent years expanded to a second floor in Trump Tower where Wool, a member of Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla., has an office overlooking Central Park.

“It was a very good price [compared] to what it is today,” the 48-year-old said. Propped a few feet from his desk, a framed photo shows Wool, Hayes and others at a Dominari charity event at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club, grinning alongside the president.

Mastering finance

Dominari launched 58 years and two name changes ago. First known as Spherix, it more recently did business as AIkido Pharma, a publicly traded firm that researched everything from pancreatic cancer drugs to ketamine’s potential for treating Alzheimer’s.

As biotech stocks soared during the pandemic, the money-losing AIkido issued equity that helped it amass a cash pile reaching $66 million by the end of 2021. Hayes turned to financial markets—and Wool—in search of growth.

Wool boasted a deep Rolodex from years of banking at Morgan Stanley and elsewhere. Organizing special-purpose vehicles that allowed wealthy clients to pool money for exclusive deals, he helped AIkido begin betting on private companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, defense-technology firm Anduril and Fortnite developer Epic Games.

“It’s not the easiest thing in the world to access those,” Wool said. “We made people a lot of money.”

The strategy took shape around the time AIkido signed its first Trump Tower lease. “I often saw their team at work in Trump Tower, always focused on something innovative and exciting,” Eric Trump said.

AIkido bought a registered broker-dealer firm, expanded its Trump Tower footprint and rebranded as Dominari. The Latin term means “to be the master of.” Wool became Dominari’s president. Soo Yu, his wife, also joined the board.

The new firm initially struggled, pulling in $2 million of revenue in 2023 en route to a nearly $23 million net loss, according to securities filings. But it nurtured early clients, hosting charity events in recent years at Trump clubs. Revenue jumped in 2024 through deals with mostly small businesses, including an initial public offering for the Don Jr.-backed drone manufacturer Unusual Machines.

Still, Dominari’s cash pile had dwindled. Its accumulated deficit—losses that piled up on its books over decades—reached $223 million in December. Shares ended last year below $1 apiece.

Trump infusion

The Trumps gave Dominari a shot in the arm. Weeks after the president’s inauguration, Eric and Don Jr. each purchased $1 million of Dominari stock in a $13.5 million financing round, according to securities filings. The pair got additional stock upon being named advisers, sending Dominari shares skyrocketing as high as 1200% above where they started the year.

With 6.7% ownership stakes valued above $6 million apiece, the Trump sons are the firm’s largest shareholders outside of Hayes, Wool and Yu, according to FactSet. Three other Trump Organization officials now round out Dominari’s advisory board.

In February, as President Trump’s crypto business ventures and pro-crypto policy agenda took shape, Dominari began funneling money into bitcoin exchange-traded funds, amassing $2 million in holdings by the end of March, according to securities filings. The firm also invested with the Trumps in a data-center startup that became part of American Bitcoin, a crypto-mining venture set to go public in the coming weeks.

“Do Eric and Don influence me, or do I influence them?” Wool said. “I think we’re just like-minded.”

Dominari has helped American Bitcoin raise $220 million, according to a securities filing. The fee for its part in that equity sale: $4.8 million.

Wool said the Trump brothers have also been involved in some of Dominari’s other investments, which have recently included SPVs betting on tech companies such as Musk’s xAI and SpaceX. “Sometimes they are just a passive investor,” he said, “and sometimes they want to lean into something.”

The latest instance of that came this month with the creation of a special-purpose acquisition company, a vehicle used to take businesses public while avoiding some of the red tape of a traditional public offering.

Advised by Eric, Don Jr. and Wool, the SPAC aims to raise $300 million to buy a U.S. manufacturer. Eric and Don Jr.’s combined 5 million shares in that blank-check firm could be worth millions of dollars or more. Securities filings show Dominari, the offering’s lead underwriter, will be awarded 1.1 million shares upon the deal’s closing.

Reach for the sun

Even on deals in which their new advisers aren’t publicly involved, Hayes and Wool have benefited from the Trumps’ networks.

In June, the bank helped crypto project Tron merge with a listed toy maker called SRM. The deal revolved around Tron founder Justin Sun, who faced market-manipulation charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case that was recently paused.

Sun invested $75 million in World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture backed by the Trump family, and amassed more than $20 million of the president’s memecoin to earn VIP treatment at a gala dinner for coinholders.

Wool said he met Sun through a mutual friend whose last name wasn’t Trump. “Did [Sun] ask Eric if I’m a good person? Yes, he did,” Wool said. “That was Eric’s involvement.”

Hayes and Wool think Sun is a generational talent who will outlast crypto’s notorious boom-and-bust cycles. Before the Tron deal was announced, an SPV organized by Yu in May threw $5 million into SRM, securities filings show. The investment in stock and warrants, which earned Dominari a $300,000 commission, would be worth more than $120 million based on Tron’s current share price.

It was the type of exclusive deal that Wool said hedge funds and executives are increasingly calling to get in on.

“Now you wanna be my buddy?” said Wool, who rang the Nasdaq opening bell last week. “I don’t need it.”

Investor known for his high-profile role in the 2021 Spac boom plans to list a new company

Self-described “Spac King” Chamath Palihapitiya is launching a new special purpose acquisition vehicle, marking his return to blank-cheque companies after playing a leading role in the pandemic-era boom that quickly turned to a bust.

The former Facebook executive was a prominent proponent of Spacs in 2020 and 2021, launching more than 10 of his own as investors poured billions of dollars into the broader market to fund exotic projects including flying taxi groups and companies hoping to commercialise space travel.

The fervour died because of rising interest rates in 2022, with most of the Spacs launched four years ago — including a majority of those backed by Palihapitiya — having fallen in value since they began trading.

But Spacs have made a comeback this year as market volatility sparked by Donald Trump’s tariffs has weighed on traditional initial public offerings.

Palihapitiya jumped on the bandwagon on Monday, two months after asking people on X if he should return to the market.

Despite more than 70 per cent of the 57,864 people who responded to the X poll voting “no”, Palihapitiya later said he would “probably” launch a Spac anyway.

His new vehicle, American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp, hopes to raise $250mn in an IPO that would entail it being listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AEXA, according to a preliminary prospectus filed with US regulators.

Spacs are shell companies with no underlying operations that list on a stock exchange and then combine with a private business, allowing a back door for private groups to become publicly traded without an IPO.

In a letter addressed to “the friends and supporters” of Social Capital, the venture capital firm he founded in 2011, Palihapitiya said “the biggest gains in the future will come from companies that are involved in fixing the fundamental risks that come from our interconnected global order while reinforcing American exceptionalism”.

He suggested companies in energy production, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies and defence would be among those on his Spac’s radar.

Social Capital did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Palihapitiya has in recent months railed against the “opacity” of traditional IPOs, hitting out at banks for mispricing companies whose shares surged on their first day of trading.

“While Spacs are not the solution for every issue in the IPO process, I continue to believe that they have an important piece to play in capital formation — and especially now,” he said in his letter.

“Without doubt, the investment will entail substantial risk including the possibility of total loss,” Palihapitiya added. Retail investors should only consider investing if they could bear losses on speculative investments, he cautioned.

“[If] they do lose their entire capital, they will embody the adage from President Trump that there can be ‘no crying in the casino’,” he said.

Meta and Character.ai probed over touting AI mental health advice to children

Texas attorney-general joins Senate in investigating Meta’s practices around minors using its technology

Meta and artificial intelligence start-up Character.ai are being investigated by Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton over whether the companies misleadingly market their artificial intelligence chatbots as therapists and mental health support tools.

The attorney-general’s office said it was opening the investigation into Meta’s AI Studio, as well as the chatbot maker Character.ai, for potential “deceptive trade practices”, arguing their chatbots were presented as “professional therapeutic tools, despite lacking proper medical credentials or oversight”, according to a statement on Monday.

“By posing as sources of emotional support, AI platforms can mislead vulnerable users, especially children, into believing they’re receiving legitimate mental healthcare,” Paxton said.

The investigation comes as companies offering AI for consumers are increasingly facing scrutiny over whether they are doing enough to protect users — and particularly minors — from dangers such as exposure to toxic or graphic content, potential addiction to chatbot interactions and privacy breaches.

The Texas probe follows the launch of the Senate’s investigation of Meta on Friday after leaked internal documents showed the company’s policies permitted the chatbot to have “sensual” and “romantic” chats with children.

Senator Josh Hawley, chair of the judiciary sub-committee on crime and counterterrorism, wrote to Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg that the investigation would look into whether the company’s generative-AI products enable exploitation or other criminal harms to children.

“Is there anything — ANYTHING — Big Tech won’t do for a quick buck?” Hawley wrote on X.

Meta said its policies prohibit content that sexualises children, and that the leaked internal documents, reported by Reuters, “were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed”.

Zuckerberg has been ploughing billions of dollars into efforts to build “personal superintelligence” and make Meta the “AI leader”.

This has included developing Meta’s own large language models, called Llama, as well as its own Meta AI chatbot which has been integrated into its social media apps.

Zuckerberg has publicly touted the potential for Meta’s chatbot to act in a therapeutic role. “For people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI,” he told media analyst Ben Thompson on a podcast in May.

Character.ai, meanwhile, builds AI-powered chatbots with different personas — and allows users to create their own. It has dozens of user-generated therapist-style bots. One, called “Psychologist”, has been interacted with more than 200mn times, for example.

Character is also the subject of multiple lawsuits from families that allege their children have suffered real-world harms from using the platform.

The Texas attorney-general said the chatbots from Meta and Character can impersonate licensed mental health professionals, fabricate qualifications and claim to protect confidentiality, while their terms of service show interactions were logged and “exploited for targeted advertising and algorithmic development”.

Paxton has issued a civil investigative demand which requires the companies turn over information to help determine if they have violated Texas consumer protection laws.

Meta said: “We clearly label AIs, and to help people better understand their limitations. We include a disclaimer that responses are generated by AI — not people. These AIs aren’t licensed professionals and our models are designed to direct users to seek qualified medical or safety professionals when appropriate.”

Character said it has prominent disclaimers to remind users that an AI persona is not real, and that its targeted advertising had “not involved using the content of chats on the platform”.

“The user-created characters on our site are fictional, they are intended for entertainment, and we have taken robust steps to make that clear,” the company said. “When users create characters with the words ‘psychologist’, ‘therapist’, ‘doctor’, or other similar terms in their names, we add language making it clear that users should not rely on these characters for any type of professional advice.”

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Isabel Marant: ‘The cool girl attitude is about breaking codes’

The French designer on the enduring appeal of her free-spirited boho aesthetic

On a warm summer’s day in Paris, designer Isabel Marant is in her studio talking about a recent adventure in vintage shopping. She found a pair of silver and gold sandals in a store that she deemed “a bit disco, super nice”. On taking them to the till however, she spotted the label: Isabel Marant. “I was like ‘no way!’ I totally forgot I had designed them,” she says, laughing. “Of course I didn’t buy them.’”

When it’s been 31 years since you founded your eponymous brand, you can be forgiven for forgetting one pair of sandals. But the anecdote shows the lasting appeal of the French designer’s boyish bohemian aesthetic. Recently that look — and some of her greatest hits such as her 2009 Bekett wedge trainers — have been picked up by a new generation.

Seated at a round table under a giant disco ball, surrounded by rails of lacy white cotton and faded blue denim garments for next year, Marant is trying to simultaneously eat a salad, drink a coffee and discuss this new wave of fans and hashtags such as #isabelmarantgirls. “It’s very funny, I haven’t seen the years passing and suddenly wow, I’m nearly 60 [she’s 58]. I launched the sneakers years ago. But it makes sense because fashion is a repetition.”

The original Beketts, a basketball style with a concealed wedge, were worn by everyone from Gisele Bündchen to Beyoncé in her 2011 Love on Top video — until its credibility was dented by the cumbersome copies that it spawned. Now though, 16 years since it was launched the Bekett is having a resurgence, selling well alongside a 2022 update, the Balksee. Meanwhile so-called Marant core looks such as cowboy boots with white cotton dresses or skirts have been as ubiquitous as spicy margs this summer.

Someone who works for a fashion school in New York recently told her that “all the students are totally obsessed with Isabel Marant”. Why? Because she doesn’t dye her hair or wear much make-up and gives off a sense of liberation that’s missing in modern culture. Her brand is associated with two returning pop culture moments: mid-2000s boho, with its hippie blouses and gladiator sandals, and indie sleaze, a retroactive term applied to the late 2000s aesthetic marked by skinny jeans and messy eyeliner. They were less self-conscious times, when social media was in its infancy and fashion felt more free.

Having helped create the look of these eras, Marant is in the process of reshaping her own role within the brand, and enjoying more professional freedom. She’s stepped back from designing the collections, and over the past two years colleague Kim Bekker has taken on the role. “We didn’t really want to make an announcement on it because I wanted it to be a non-event,” Marant explains.

“Kim knows the language of Isabel Marant perfectly. That’s why I chose her to succeed me. It’s been a while that I’ve been trying to push Kim forward because I always thought that I am not going to work like crazy all my life.”

Clearly, Marant values her private life with her husband, designer Jérôme Dreyfuss, and their son, as well as their time spent in an off-the-grid cabin in Fontainebleau where they can be quite “hippy and bohemian”: gardening, making ceramics, playing cards. 

In an industry where work-life balance is often elusive, Marant adds, “this decision that I took released me from a huge stress that was kind of drowning me and drying my creativity. I had to breathe and have it a little bit lighter and more joyful.”

In 2016 Marant sold a 51 per cent stake in the business to Montefiore Investment, and in 2023 chief executive Anouck Duranteau-Loeper said the brand had a plan to hit €500mn in sales within four years. When Duranteau-Loeper and I chat briefly in her office in the studio, she says that it’s still a goal, but the timing will have changed due to issues such as the luxury slowdown, and a decline in wholesalers. 

There have been reports in the press about lower sales and other financial problems. She acknowledges a significant drop in sales from 2023 to 2024 but says annual revenue is currently above €200mn thanks to “a very strong traction of our DTC channels with high double-digit growth since the fourth quarter of 2024, and the EBITDA remains strong.” 

Duranteau-Loeper adds that she believes the brand’s advantages are its contemporary price point, because “the super-luxury brands have left us a sweet spot on the market”, and “authenticity in the way we conduct the business . . . not shifting from one trend to the other, and remaining who we are and what we do. Isabel is very cautious about that, as you can imagine.”

Part of Marant’s new role is ensuring this core vibe reverberates throughout the brand, along with overseeing “the design of the shops, the merchandising and working a lot on the image side with Emmanuelle Alt on the pictures, on our website, on Instagram,” she says.

Marant and Alt collaborated from about 2008 until 2011, when Alt was named editor of French Vogue. The pair became a formidable duo, helping to spark a global fascination with the sharp silhouettes and pared-back polish of French fashion — skinny jeans, stilettos and tailored blazers included. Alt brought “a twist, a sexy attitude that’s not vulgar or too much”, Marant recalls.

Fusing different aesthetics is at the heart of the Isabel Marant look, an energetic alchemy that might combine disco, vintage, athleisure, ’80s, masculine tailoring and global craft. “This mix-and-match brings an attitude that is very specific to us,” she explains. “You can have a very sexy tiny dress, but we put it with a men’s jacket. The ‘cool girl’ attitude is about breaking codes, there is always something that could be wrong for others that makes the silhouette cool for us.” 

Tanned, silver-haired and wearing an old navy sweatshirt, aviator glasses and layers of gold necklaces, Marant exudes undone cool, and when she changes into a man’s suede shirt for our photo shoot she proves her own point about mixing masculine and feminine. Can she unravel the age-old enigma of what this French je ne sais quoi is? “We have this attitude, smoking cigarettes, drinking wine and looking like we don’t care . . . but also we are of the revolution, so we have this f*ck it for today and we’ll see tomorrow. We have this spirit.”

The autumn/winter 2025 collection evokes an indie sleaze city girl rather than the breezy global nomad we often see from Isabel Marant in summer. Oversized blazers are worn as dresses, while deconstructed lace mini dresses and tartan mini skirts are paired with lace tights and fishnets for some ’80s cocktail party sass.

Marant says she developed a distinctive look for herself early on in life, realising later it was probably a response to her brother, whom she thought was better looking and got more attention as a result. (She is quick to add that she loved her brother and didn’t resent him for this.) She also borrowed ideas from her father’s wardrobe, going to school in his cashmere sweaters worn as dresses, classic Harris tweed jackets and paisley robes from Bloomingdale’s.

She became enamoured of the textiles and jewellery she encountered on her travels to Africa, India and America. They have informed both her personal style and her brand’s — though use for the latter has sometimes drawn accusations of cultural appropriation. In 2020 she apologised after a cape appeared to use a pattern unique to the Purepecha community in Mexico.

“It’s tricky,” Marant says of global communities whose patterns have long influenced one another but “who don’t make money” from them when brands like hers can generate real turnover using the same designs. She tries to work with communities she is inspired by, but meeting delivery deadlines can be difficult. Facilitating those collaborations is one of her new projects.

So how does she feel about the return of more maximal fashion after threeish years of the stealth-wealth minimalism known as “quiet luxury”? Only just stopping short of rolling her eyes, she says, “‘Quiet luxury’ was really just a way for a lot of designers to breeze, and make something really simple. Some brands have it in their DNA but it’s really very boring when everybody starts to do it.” 

For Marant, “fashion is there to bring some dreams, some energy, some joy.”

Move comes as FTSE 250 company battles to retain talent and combat a falling share price

Man Group has pressed employees to sign stricter non-compete agreements sparking internal resistance, as the company contends with a run of poor performance and a fierce industry-wide battle for top talent.

In February, investment staff at the world’s largest listed hedge fund group were told to sign agreements that would extend the length of time they would have to wait before joining a competitor after leaving the firm, three people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.

Two of the people said that management received pushback over the move, while a third person said the move had prompted some staff to explore options at rival firms.

“The firm’s decision to expand non-compete agreements earlier this year was restrictive to certain investment teams and consistent with industry standards amid an increasingly competitive talent landscape,” said Emma Holden, chief people officer at Man Group.

The length and restrictiveness of non-compete agreements vary across hedge funds and depend on role and seniority. At top hedge funds, portfolio managers may have to sit out of the market for as long as 18 months to two years, while an analyst might have to wait a year.

The biggest hedge funds have been embroiled in a fierce war for talent with portfolio managers and top analysts receiving multimillion dollar signing bonuses and high profit shares.

Many hedge funds have been deferring a proportion of traders’ earnings and extending non-compete clauses to try to prevent staff from leaving for competitors.

Longer non-compete terms were “definitely one of the results [of] this so-called war for talent”, said a business development executive at a top US hedge fund. “It’s harder to find good people so you do everything you can to keep them.”

London-listed Man, which manages $193bn in investor capital and has 1,700 employees, is one of the world’s best known hedge fund brands, investing across a wide variety of strategies and assets. It is best known for its quantitative hedge fund unit AHL, which makes money by betting on market trends using computers and vast amounts of market data.

The FTSE 250 company, led by chief executive Robyn Grew, takes pride in an open, academic culture that encourages collaboration and the discussion of complex ideas. Its executives have also touted the benefits of flexible working, a fact that is seen internally as a competitive advantage compared to many other top hedge funds which demand daily office attendance.

But one of the people familiar with the matter highlighted the discrepancy between what he saw as the firm’s supportive work culture with the desire to prevent employees from leaving by tightening legal agreements.

Man Group’s share price has fallen 30 per cent over the past 12 months as the computer-driven strategies it is best known for have struggled to perform amid a trade war initiated by US President Donald Trump.

Earlier this year, 150 London-based quants at the company were told to come into the office five days a week for an “all hands on deck’ cross-team research project”. The diktat applied between May and the end of July.

UK design studios that produce bespoke clothing for grand hotels face complex demands

New Yorkers who visit the Peacock Alley cocktail bar in the Waldorf Astoria hotel are now served in the evenings by men in peacock blue velvet suits and women in floor-length sequin gowns. Produced by a small design studio in Shoreditch, east London, these are not ordinary hotel uniforms.

A luxury hotel with rooms starting at $1,500 a night, which has reopened after a $2bn restoration taking eight years, cannot afford to neglect its clothing. The Waldorf Astoria New York has polished up everything from Cole Porter’s lobby piano to a clock commissioned by Queen Victoria. Its staff must also look the part.

The man responsible for the Peacock Alley garb, along with Prince of Wales check three-piece suits worn by other staff, is Nicholas Oakwell, a former milliner who has helped to lead the transformation of staff uniforms in global luxury hotels from Dubai to Singapore. Where they once used off-the-peg clothing, many hotel brands now boast bespoke sets of designs.

Luxury uniform design is a little-known apparel niche, somewhere between the originality and expressiveness of fashion and the fast-paced demands of the hospitality business. “They say, ‘Nicholas, the hoop is there’ and I jump,” Oakwell says of NO Uniform, the studio he founded 23 years ago with a £250,000 order from London’s Great Eastern (now Andaz) hotel.

The Waldorf Astoria is Oakwell’s first New York commission but his clothing can be seen from the Rosewood Hotel in London to the Raffles Doha and the Jumeirah Carlton Tower. He has plenty of competition: the UK has a cluster of travel and leisure uniform studios, from Studio 104 to Fashionizer and Jalin Design, which work there and abroad.

The international nature of London and its history of grand hotels such as the Savoy and the Connaught have helped them gain work globally. So has the mobility of many hotel managers: Luigi Romaniello, managing director of the Waldorf Astoria New York, knew Oakwell’s work from having run the Rosewood Abu Dhabi.

The bespoke uniform business has grown in the past two decades as an emphasis on design has spread from a few boutique hotels, such as The Royalton in New York, to many luxury hotel chains. Mid-market groups such as Hilton Hotels, which operates the Waldorf Astoria New York, have also pushed into luxury.

This has increased the number of five-star hotels that are willing to pay the typical cost for an opening of about £1,500 per head to clothe everyone from porters to waiters and receptionists in bespoke uniforms. “They want the staff to look good and to be part of the story they are creating,” says Jane Porter, founder of Studio 104.

But uniform design is a demanding business. The top line sounds good, with some contracts worth £500,000, plus longer-term sales from replacing worn-out clothing, but it includes a lot of work. Studios cover everything from designs to pattern-making, arranging production, and staff fittings before hotel openings (known as “installation”).

One hotel can have a huge range of staff uniforms: NO Uniform produced 120 styles for a Gulf hotel. This is multiplied by all the body sizes, so a studio may produce more than 500 patterns. There is some guesswork in predicting how many of each will be needed for staff who get hired later.

Uniforms must simultaneously look good, be comfortable enough for staff to wear for long shifts and be long-lasting. A pure wool suit is breathable but is also likely to wear quickly: each member of staff is allocated two or three sets of clothes to cover the cycle of laundering.

They also have to last aesthetically. The initial design costs are so high that owners want to avoid changing them: a hotel will often keep its uniform for more than a decade. Most will combine a classic look with a fashion flourish: “They want to see the old pomp and ceremony, up to a point,” Oakwell says of the under-40s customers now patronising grand hotels.

The broad range of demands, along with increasing competition, means that studios have reached beyond hotels. Jalin Design also makes film and television costumes, while Oakwell has produced uniforms for wealthy Gulf households and crews of superyachts. Porter of Studio 104 hopes to expand further into airline uniforms, having already made private jet crew clothing.

Airlines place larger orders with fewer variations, while hotels are “incredibly demanding”, Porter says. What used to be a design studio niche has become a tougher industry.

Mining company says backer of Brazil dam class action suit appears to be controlling the claimant law firm

BHP has demanded to know who is in charge of a £36bn lawsuit against it after the chief executive of the law firm bringing the case was pushed out by the US hedge fund backing the claim.

The mining company is defending itself against a class action brought by litigation firm Pogust Goodhead, backed by Gramercy Funds Management, on behalf of about 640,000 victims of the 2015 Mariana dam collapse in Brazil, one of the country’s worst environmental disasters.

BHP’s lawyers have written to Pogust Goodhead following a clash between the claimant firm and its main backer, saying in a letter seen by the Financial Times that it “appears that your firm may now be owned, controlled and in substance managed by Gramercy”.

The letter from Slaughter and May comes after Pogust Goodhead’s co-founder, Tom Goodhead, was removed as chief executive by Gramercy this month, according to people familiar with the matter, in a rift that has thrown into doubt the future of one of England’s biggest legal actions.

Slaughter and May has called on Pogust Goodhead to clarify what role the funder will play in the “ongoing conduct, control” and “management” of the blockbuster claim, adding Gramercy appeared to “have the power to” remove and appoint the firm's senior executives.

Gramercy has denied it “owns, controls, or manages” the firm.

The letter is BHP’s move to go on the offensive as both sides await an imminent ruling in the landmark litigation. BHP and Brazilian miner Vale offered $1.4bn to settle the case in June but Pogust Goodhead was holding out for a higher sum of about $3bn, the FT previously reported.

Slaughter and May has requested answers to questions about Pogust Goodhead’s governance by Wednesday and has also demanded to know whether the firm is in a financial position to continue the claim.

Its letter said Goodhead’s removal suggested “that there is not only significant discord and upheaval within your firm and between your firm and its funders, but there might be serious issues with your firm’s financial position and ability to continue as a going concern”.

Pogust Goodhead announced on Saturday — three days after the letter — that it had secured fresh funding from Gramercy, which has already put up at least £450mn to finance the claim. Gramercy on Monday said the new credit facility was $65mn.

Questions were previously raised about Pogust Goodhead’s accounts after its auditors flagged a “material uncertainty” over its ability to continue as a going concern in overdue 2022 financial statements published earlier this year. Goodhead said at the time, when he was leading the firm, that the business had the “unequivocal backing” of its lenders.

Goodhead was ousted following rising tensions with Gramercy over the next round of funding, as well as disagreements over corporate governance, said people familiar with the matter.

The hedge fund exercised a right under its loan that resulted in Goodhead’s shares in the law firm being handed to Huw Dolphin, a lawyer and turnaround consultant, and a new board being installed, the people said. Slaughter and May said “three of the four directors appear to be Gramercy appointees” and noted two of Pogust Goodhead’s new directors seemed to have links to the hedge fund.

An internal Pogust Goodhead memo earlier in August said Goodhead was “on leave” and was still a member of the board. It added chief operating officer Alicia Alinia had taken over as interim CEO.

Gramercy said it “denies the allegation that it owns, controls, or manages Pogust Goodhead”. Dolphin was the legal owner of shares in Pogust Goodhead and that the law firm was “managed by an independent board” appointed by him, the fund added. 

Gramercy also said the new board made it “stronger than ever and we plan to financially stand behind the firm”.

Alinia said: “We will not be distracted by those seeking to discredit our fight for justice on behalf of our clients. Crucially, we remain fully independent, with complete control over the strategy and direction of every case.”

She added: “Our renewed focus on governance ensures that the firm is equipped with the leadership and oversight necessary to safeguard the best interests of our people and our clients.”

BHP, Slaughter and May and Vale declined to comment. Goodhead did not immediately respond to a request for comment.