Ex-Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley Joins Crypto Firm Forteus as U.S. Regulatory Climate Warms

Numeus Group has just recruited Bill Daley, a seasoned power broker of Wall Street, also the former White House Chief of staff to Barack Obama into its Forteus management division.

Daley, who served as Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton, will be helping Forteus to woo investors.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Daley said the U.S. is now entering “a time of renewed optimism and regulatory progress for the crypto industry”—a nod to the growing momentum behind digital assets as President Donald Trump publicly champions turning the U.S. into a global crypto hub.

Founded in 2021 by Two Sigma alumnus Nobel Gulati, Numeus Group manages over $130 million in assets across offices in Switzerland, New York, London, and Mauritius.

Forteus, its asset management division, has been positioning itself as a bridge between traditional finance and digital innovation.

Daley, now 76, brings decades of experience straddling in both politics and finance. He retired in 2024 as the Vice Chairman of Public Affairs at Wells Fargo, after previously holding similar leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase and BNY Mellon.

In late 2024, Forteus partnered with crypto exchange OKX and custodian Komainu in a deal designed to solve two persistent institutional challenges in crypto market: security concerns and trading flexibility.

Through this collaboration, Forteus can execute trades on OKX’s platform round-the-clock, while client assets remain securely stored in Komainu’s institutional-grade cold storage.

This arrangement eliminates the traditional trade-off between liquidity and security—an issue that has long deterred traditional asset managers from entering the space.