Mark Vandevelde

I write about America’s most powerful business people, focusing on Wall Street and private equity.

After starting my career at Bain & Company in London, I worked for several years at Hg, the tech-focused private equity firm. In 2013, I joined the Financial Times, initially as executive editor of the opinion pages.

For the past decade, I've been reporting from London and New York. Here is some of my writing for the FT’s Big Read and Weekend Magazine sections.

Email me at [email protected] or [email protected].

Photo of financial journalist Mark Vandevelde

Stories

Double-page spread in FT Weekend Magazine featuring an arial photograph of the dock at Duryea's Montauk, headlined 'Rumble in the Hamptons'

A billionaire bought a lobster shack in the Hamptons. Then the trouble began

The sleepy Long Island hamlet of Montauk and its beloved Lobster Deck resisted gentrification for decades. Enter Wall Street heavyweight Marc Rowan.

Photo montage of Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg at an F45 gym at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar (Photo by Sgt. Jorge Rosales via Defense Visual Information Service)

The credit crunch that ruined Mark Wahlberg’s favorite workout

Muscle-shredding resistance exercises, a Hollywood movie star, and an off-balance sheet financing ploy involving Fortress Investment Group.

Full-page spread in the Financial Times headlined 'The story of a house'

One house tells the story of America’s brutal economic recovery

418 Homeplace Drive was one family’s dream. It is also a microcosm of the recklessness behind the financial crisis, and the fragile stability that followed.

'Double-page spread in Financial Times Weekend Magazine featuring a photo of Apollo Global Management founder Leon Black, headlined 'A Man Beyond All Power'

Leon Black’s downfall confounds the legacy of #MeToo on Wall Street

How America’s legal system twisted one woman’s allegations of sexual misconduct into a battle between two powerful men.

Full-page spread in the Financial Times featuring a photo-montage of former Apollo executive Imran Siddiqui and Apollo co-founder Marc Rowan, headlined 'The generational feud that rocked Apollo'

The generational feud over Apollo's ‘shadow bank’

Imran Siddiqui helped invent one of the slickest money-making machines in financial history. Then he got into a legal fight with his ex‑boss.

Photo of the Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey

The strange case of the ‘$100,000,000 deli’ and the elite colleges that own a slice

A tiny sandwich shop in New Jersey is the most intractable mystery in US financial markets – or it was, until I tracked down its hedge-fund owners in Hong Kong.

Full-page spread in the Financial Times featuring a photograph of former TPG executive Bill McGlashan

A suspect in the US college bribery scandal had a plan to save capitalism

Bill McGlashan had tried everything from dotcom startups to selling cholesterol pills. On Richard Branson’s private island, he reinvented himself as a social visionary.

Full-page spread in the Financial Times headlined 'A secretive firm uncovered'

Brookfield is a triangular jigsaw puzzle that confounds Wall Street

Born from the Bronfman liquor dynasty, Brookfield draws billions from retail investors, public pensions, and sovereign wealth funds — yet what it is, and how it operates, is maddeningly opaque.

Double-page spread in the Financial Times Weekend Magazine, headlined 'Ploughing with the FT', featuring a photo of Mark Vandevelde with Peter Williams, the founder of Jack Wills

Peter Williams of Jack Wills on the joy he gets from ploughing

The founder of the private equity-backed clothing label taught me how to drive a tractor in a straight line – and explained how brands create obsessions.