A Wall Street hedge fund whose boss recently clawed back a $100 million gift to the University of Pennsylvania over antisemitism is now being sued over allegations the firm refused to pay out millions in bonuses owed to one of its former executives.
Ross Stevens — who made headlines in December when he yanked a megabuck pledge to his Ivy League alma mater over its weak response to anti-Israel protests on campus — is now being sued by Erick Goralski, who formerly served as head of client strategies at Stevens’ fund, Stone Ridge Asset Management.
Goralski, who had previously done stints as a banker at Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers, claims in the Aug. 2 complaint in New York state court that Stevens reneged on the pact to pay him fat bonuses over a six-year period as high as $50 million a year.
That’s despite New York-based Stone Ridge — whose investments have included crypto, fine art and fintech loans — recently disclosing publicly that it raked in more than $1 billion in trading profits last year.
“This is about the greedy side of Wall Street that everyone thinks exists,” a source close to both money men told The Post. “And in fact, it does.”
This case follows Stevens’ public clash with UPenn’s former president Liz Magill, in which he said he was “appalled” by Dec. 5 testimony to Congress in which she failed to confirm that calls for the genocide of Jews would violate school policy.
Two days after the hearing, Stevens said he would pull a planned $100 million donation.
Magill resigned four days later on Dec. 11.
A spokesman for UPenn did not reply to The Post’s requests for comment.
After Goralski left Stone Ridge in 2018, Stevens promised to pay him a $4.4 million windfall in 2019, following up with a payout of $9 million the following year and $10 million the year after that, Goralski’s lawsuit claims.
But Goralski gripes that he allegedly only picked up $700,000 in 2019 from Stevens before the money dried up.
Goralski helped Stevens — who after graduating from U. Penn’s prestigious Wharton School briefly worked at Goldman Sachs — set up Stone Ridge in 2012 with a focus on alternative investments such as reinsurance and bitcoin, according to the lawsuit.
Court filings claim their relationship “soured” over a “longstanding dispute” over the “treatment of equity for co-founders and key early hires.”
“It’s Ross’s way or it’s the highway,” the source familiar with their relationship added. “He really got pissed off that Erick questioned his decision-making.”
The 52-year-old Goralski, who declined to comment, now runs boutique investment firm Mobilize Capital Partners.
Lawyers representing Stone Ridge Asset Management in the case did not respond to The Post’s emails and calls seeking comment.
Goralski claimed in his complaint that he had “disagreements over the direction of the business” that controls more than $20 billion in assets. In a series of LinkedIn posts over the summer, he took thinly-veiled swipes at Stone Ridge.
In a post last month, he described his time at the firm and there was “an energy building that wasn’t entirely positive.”
“I witnessed a constant tension between the chosen values like “focus” that emblazoned the coffee mugs, and the intoxication of launching the next big new idea,” Goralski wrote. “Focus won out most of the time, but there were many interesting discussions behind closed doors.”
Filings show that lawyers for Stone Ridge handed Goralski a cease and desist letter on July 26 over the LinkedIn posts, claiming they were a breach of the 2018 severance agreement and because “they are specifically referencing his employment and relationship with Stone Ridge and its founder (Ross Stevens).”
Last month, Stone Ridge’s lawyers warned they would claw back money he earned in the two years before he stood down from the firm unless he stopped posting on social media immediately, according to court papers.
In 2018, Stone Ridge lawyers had drafted a letter that promised Goralski millions of dollars so that he would “leave quietly,” the complaint said. The 2018 offer, which appears in court filings, shows that he was to be formally kept on as a consultant “special advisor” to Stevens.
The lawsuit described the agreement as “a pretense that Stone Ridge required to justify the substantial payments of compensation to him following his separation.”
According to the contract, bonus payouts were at the “discretion” of the CEO but the lawsuit quoted Stevens as allegedly telling Goralski: “I don’t care what is on the paper, I am going to pay you this money.”
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