FUND MANAGER IN FOCUS
Fund Manager in Focus
Chris Hohn By Filipe R. Costa
“Banks are inherently difficult to analyse, opaque, highly levered and speculative – we don’t want speculations, we want investments.” - Sir Christopher Hohn An new kind of obsession All the regular readers of this column at MI Magazine are certainly aware of the extravagant, exquisite and sometimes lunatic way of living hedge fund managers usually espouse. Many of them quickly run through the ranks of life to spend what they can and cannot, purchasing fine arts, expensive wine, and luxury apartments overlooking Central Park, while living an unbound life. But we also have those who have a strong commitment to what they do and for whom life is all about adding value – forever. Leon Cooperman, featured in last month’s column, is an example of this. You would most likely find him commuting on the ferry to NYC or sharing a taxi with someone rather than drinking champagne inside a limousine while travelling to an apartment at 432 Park Avenue. While the differences between hedge fund managers are huge, there is one common point between them: they all have their own hedge fund business, of course. And there is also another common point for those who make money from it: they all become philanthropists, frequently donating to charities and often running their own foundations.
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This month’s featured hedge fund manager, Christopher Hohn, is a shy man who doesn’t like much publicity. Raised in the UK from a modest family, he made it big and entered Forbes´ Billionaires List. However, unlike most in the industry, he still drives a Prius and wears a black Swatch he has had for years. But what makes Christopher Hohn different from all the others is the manner in which he conducts his philanthropic activities. In 2002, in his mid30s, he created the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a charity with the aim of helping children in developing countries. The year after, he founded The Children’s Investment Fund to make money to fund the charity he created. Unlike the other fund managers, it was not the money that turned him into a philanthropist; it was his “obsession” to donate that led him to make money.
The Children’s Investment Fund Chris Hohn, or Sir Chris Hohn KCMG, to give him proper credit, was born in Auddlestone, Surrey, UK, in 1967. Son of a Jamaican car mechanic of European descent and of a legal secretary fromEast Sussex, Hohn was educated at a state school. He then attended Southampton
University, where he graduated in Business & Accounting with a First Class Honours in 1988. Urged on by his tutor at Southampton, he applied for Harvard in the US where he concluded an MBA in 1993. He graduated among the top 5%. While at Harvard, Hohn met Jamie Cooper, whom he would marry in 1995 and have four children with (including triplets). His professional career in finance started soon after graduating from Harvard, at the private equity group Apax Partners. Two years later, he landed a job at Perry Capital, a hedge fund on Wall Street, where he was able to run an investment strategy. In 1998 he was made head of Perry’s operations in London. During his tenure at Perry he made around £75 million, ample money to retire, if he so wished. Earlier, at the age of 20, when he travelled to the Philippines he saw real poverty among children and vowed that if he ever made enough money to help poor children he would. In 2002 his desire would become a reality when he and his wife founded the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), a charitable organisation headquartered in London with the main aim of fighting poverty, particularly poverty affecting children. He then set up The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI) with the main