Jared Kushner will keep his stake in Cadre, for now

Jared Kushner has decided not to divest from Cadre, a real estate tech start up he co-founded.

While Kushner still plans to divest from the company in the future, that plan is on hold, CNBC reported. Instead, the company agreed to not seek out any foreign investors, to avoid conflicts of interest generated by Kushner’s position of senior advisor in the Trump administration.

“The [divestiture] is still planned and has been on hold only due to Covid, and in the meantime Cadre and Jared have an understanding that while Jared continues to be an investor in the company, Cadre will not seek foreign investment and therefore avoid any perceptions of conflict,” a person with knowledge of the matter told CNBC.

Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was expected to divest from Cadre earlier this year. Good government groups have long said that his involvement is a conflict of interest with his wide-ranging role in the federal government, which included multiple projects in the Middle East, including a $50 billion economic plan to resurrect the Israel-Palestine peace process. But his role at Cadre also raised concerns for SoftBank, which pulled out of a potential investment in the firm after Kushner refused to divest from Cadre.

In May, Cadre, which allows individual investors to pool money to invest in commercial real estate, announced it would launch an opportunistic fund to target opportunities that emerge from the pandemic. As of December, such funds had already raised $142 billion in dry powder. [CNBC] — Georgia Kromrei