Generous hedge fund boss tops philanthropist league

By NICK CRAVEN and BRENDAN MONTAGUE, Daily Mail
Last updated at 17:50 28 June 2006

A young city high-flier has emerged as Britain's most generous philanthropist, giving away more than £50m to children's charities in the developing world last year.

Christopher Hohn, 39, little-known outside the reclusive world of hedge fund traders, set up The Children's Investment Fund (TCI) with his American-born wife Jamie, 40 three years ago.

Accounts just filed show that in the year up to August 31, 2005, TCI gave £50.4m to charity, which while some way short of the extraordinary benevolence of Wall Street billionaire Warren Buffett, who plans to give away his £22bn fortune, does make him Britain's most munificent man.

'Greed is Good' may still be the predominant slogan echoing through Wall Street and the square mile, but 'Giving is Good' is also beginning to be heard.

Uniquely, TCI was specifically set up to funnel a fixed proportion (1 per cent) of assets to its charitable arm, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation.

The fund, one of the most successful in Europe, was set up by Mr Hohn, a 39-year-old graduate of Southampton University and son of a white Jamaican car mechanic who emigrated to Britain in 1960.

Mr Hohn, from Addlestone, Surrey, was a Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School, putting him in the top 5 per cent of his MBA class. He cut his trading teeth on Wall Street, and when he went it alone in 2003, he set up the charity link in order to motivate his own performance, according to City sources.

The charity's main focus is helping children who have been orphaned by AIDS - or are at risk of being - in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia and India. In Africa, it is also helping with agriculture, training mentors and supporting educational initiatives.

Estimated to be worth around £80m himself, Mr Hohn is not alone in the hedge fund world in donating huge sums to charity, but usually it is done on a more ad hoc basis.

But TCI and Mr Hohn were very reticent to speak about their good works yesterday.

'We just not really interested in putting more information out there,' said a spokeswoman.

'People write about us and that's fine, but Mr Hohn doesn't wish to give any interviews about this.'

His wife, at their £2m townhouse in St John's Wood, was even less keen.

'This is a private property and if you ever come here again we will call the police,' she told a Mail reporter through the intercom of her front door.

Pride

Mr Hohn's 67-year-old father Paul, a retired car mechanic now living in East Sussex, said he was 'very proud' of his son's achievements.

'I don't like to boast about him, but whatever he's done in life, he's given it 110 percent and done well at it, from his paper round to his MBA. 'He's always had a good work ethic and been academically bright. He doesn't get his skills with money from me - I'm just an ordinary Joe and his background was quite humble.

'He got about 13 O-levels and was a top footballer at the same time, but throughout everything he's always been very unselfish and I suppose that's what is behind his wish to give something back to people who are less well off than himself.'

Two years ago, Jamie Cooper-Hohn told the FT that charity was not uppermost in people's minds when they chose to sign up to the fund in a heavily oversuscribed launch.

'Most of the investors from institutions did not feel that their boards would be more positive about the idea because of the charitable component.

'I would say that about 80 per cent of investors are neutral about that part. What they did get was a sense that this is very motivating for Chris. And if he is inspired by what he is doing, his fund will do well and so will they.'

Another hedge fund philanthropist is Arpad 'Arki' Busson, former boyfriend of supermodel Elle Macpherson, who set up his own charity ARK to help orphaned children in Eastern Europe and South Africa.

Yesterday he said of Mr Hohn and his wife: 'They are an inspiration to all of us.' He told the Mail: 'I think Chris is one of the best investors and traders of his generation. He is one of the few hedge fund managers to have mastered both disciplines.

'In addition, he and his wife are very astute philanthropists who have taken charitable giving to a new dimension.'

Mr Hohn may have a kind heart when it comes to giving, but in business he has a hard head and last year he became involved in a showdown with the bosses of Germany's mighty Deutsche Borse, the Frankfurt stock exchange. The Germans to launch a takeover bid for the London Stock Exchange but Hohn, with just 5pc of Deutsche Borse's shares, emphatically opposed the move. He won and chief executive Weiner Seifert was forced to resign.

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