A Wall Street banker lost out on a job from a top insurer after he was slapped with criminal charges that he raped a 25-year-old woman in New York City last month, The Post has learned.
Mark Harris, a 38-year-old infrastructure and energy finance specialist, was set to start a new job on April 7 with Global Atlantic Financial Group, which is owned by the private equity giant KKR, according to company insiders.
Harris signed the deal to join the firm on March 4, just two days before his arrest over the accusations — which has he vigorously denied, Global Atlantic insiders said.
But the KKR-owned insurer and private credit provider axed the six-figure contract offer after The Post broke the news of the charges in Manhattan Criminal Court, according to Harris’s lawyer Jason Goldman.
“Mr. Harris has not been indicted on these outlandish and demonstrably false allegations,” Goldman said, noting that prosecutors haven’t yet laid out a case to a grand jury.
“It’s beyond unfortunate that someone of Mr. Harris’ character can even be arrested, subjected to recklessly sanctionable articles, and have his job rescinded based on a fictitious rape claim. We expect this matter to soon be dismissed,” the defense attorney added.
A spokesperson for Global Atlantic declined to comment.
The Post first reported how prosecutors accused the ex-Investec financier of raping the woman at her Midtown Manhattan apartment while allegedly calling her a “f–king bitch” and telling her that she “had this coming.”
Harris allegedly pulled the victim’s pants down before he held her down against a mattress and raped her, according to New York prosecutors.
The woman then tried fighting off the alleged sexual predator by repeatedly pleading for him to stop before she was able to kick him off of her, according to a criminal complaint.
Harris, who denies the allegations, paid a $150,000 bail bond when he first appeared in court on March 6 on two charges of rape and one of sexual abuse.
He is due back in court on May 1 where the case is being brought by the New York County district attorney, legal filings show. The woman’s identity has not been revealed.
The banker left Investec in November last year, and his broker profile with US regulator FINRA shows he is no longer registered with any firm. A spokeswoman for his former employer declined to comment.
Before joining Investec, Harris spent 11 years at Japanese powerhouse bank SMBC where he served as the director of structured and project finance.
He then moved to SMBC Nikko Securities in 2022 where he became a director of investment banking, according to his LinkedIn profile.
An SMBC spokeswoman did not reply to The Post’s request for comment.
The University of Chicago alum lives in a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in the swanky Brooklyn Point building in Downtown Brooklyn, where a recent listing for a similar unit sold for $2.6 million.
KKR first acquired a majority stake in Global Atlantic Financial Group in 2021, before snapping up the remaining 37% in January 2024. The insurer and private credit firm is chaired by Allan Levine, a KKR partner.
Henny Kravis and his cousin George Roberts decided to set up KKR over dinner at a Midtown Italian steakhouse in 1976, sketching out their ideas for what would later become the private equity industry of today on a napkin.
Their attempt to snap up tobacco firm RJR Nabisco in a 1988 debt-fueled takeover spawned a book by two Wall Street Journal reporters and a HBO movie entitled ‘Barbarians at The Gate’.
Today, the two 80-year-old corporate raiders have a joint estimated net worth of $36 billion.
Along with their late fellow founder Jerome Kohlberg Jr, who died in 2015, they would become known as the godfathers of the leveraged buyout.
