Chris Hohn Explained

Honorific Prefix:Sir
Chris Hohn
Honorific Suffix:KCMG
Birth Name:Christopher Anthony Hohn
Birth Place:Addlestone, Surrey, England
Education:University of Southampton
Harvard Business School
Occupation:Hedge fund manager and philanthropist
Known For:Founder and CEO, The Children's Investment Fund Management Founder and Chair, The Children's Investment Fund Foundation
Spouse:
    Children:4

    Sir Christopher Anthony Hohn[1] KCMG (born October 1966) is a British billionaire hedge fund manager.

    In 2003, Hohn established The Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI), a prominent value-based hedge fund. Profits generated by the fund were initially proportionately allocated to The Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a registered charity in England and Wales that focuses on improving the lives of children living in poverty in developing countries.[2] He is known as an activist investor.

    Hohn is worth $8.21 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index in 2022 and was ranked among the most successful and wealthiest alumnus of Harvard Business School.[3] As of 2014, he had given over $4.5 billion to The Children's Investment Fund Foundation.[4] In 2019, Forbes put Hohn in the list of the world's most generous philanthropists outside of the US.[5] In recent years, Hohn has become an outspoken advocate of urgent action on the climate crisis, and a prolific contributor to the cause.[6]

    Early life

    Christopher Anthony Hohn was born in October 1966[7] in Addlestone, Surrey, United Kingdom. His father Paul was a Jamaican-born car mechanic of European descent who moved to Britain in 1960, and his mother was a legal secretary from East Sussex.[8]

    He was a pupil at St Paul's County Secondary School in Addlestone between 1979 and 1983 gaining 13 O Levels; he then attended the University of Southampton from which he graduated in 1988 with first-class honours in accounting and business economics.[9] While at Southampton, a tutor advised him to apply for Harvard Business School, where he completed the Master of Business Administration course. He graduated in 1993 as a Baker Scholar, meaning he was among the top five percent of all graduates.

    Career

    After graduating, Hohn started working for the private equity group Apax Partners in 1994. In 1996 he went to work for Perry Capital, a hedge fund on Wall Street. In 1998 he was made head of Perry's London operations. In his time with Perry, he earned an estimated £75m.

    In 2003, Hohn set up his own hedge fund, The Children's Investment Fund. TCI donated regularly to a connected charitable fund, The Children's Investment Fund Foundation, run by his wife. The original formula involved transfers of 0.5 percent of the fund's assets each year, with a further 0.5 per cent of assets for every year during which the fund achieved returns of more than 11 per cent. It is reported that Hohn established the formulaic charitable link in order to motivate himself. Coinciding with the couple's divorce proceedings, changes set in motion in 2012 led to the splitting up of the fund and the foundation. The fund no longer donates money to the foundation on a contractual basis, though it may do so on a discretionary basis.[10]

    Hohn took £200m in dividend payments in 2018, slightly more than his Children's Investment (TCI) fund made in profit. This was down from $274m in 2017 and $364m in 2016.[11] His 2015 earnings of $250 million ranked him 12th among the 25 top earning hedge fund managers.[12]

    In 2019, it was reported that he had built a €730m stake in Heathrow Airport via a range of investment companies jointly taking a 4% stake in Spanish multinational Ferrovial.[13]

    From March 2019 to March 2020 he paid himself $479 million, the highest annual amount paid to a person in the UK.[6]

    In conjunction with The Children's Investment (TCI) fund Hohn launched the "Say on climate" initiative. The idea of the campaign is to make companies disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and their plans to manage these emissions and also give shareholders an advisory vote on the plans and their results. The initiative was first implemented by Aena, Unilever, Glencore, and CN but it has won many critics at the same time.[14]

    In December 2023, Hohn received a £275 million dividend from TCI Fund Management.[15]

    Investor activism

    In November 2022, Chris Hohn on behalf of TCI wrote an open letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google.[16] [17] In the letter, Hohn stated that Google's headcount was too high and should be reduced. He also stated that there should be more effort to reduce losses in its self-driving unit Waymo. On January 20, 2023, Alphabet cut 12,000 Jobs which was 6% of its workforce.[18] On the same day, Hohn issued another letter to Pichai stating that there should be further job cuts with a target of 20%. The letter also states that management should address excessive employee compensation.

    Donations

    In 2019 it was reported by The Daily Telegraph that Hohn had donated £50,000 to environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion, with a further £150,000 donated by the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. None of the Charity's money was spent on civil disobedience, it was claimed.[19] As of January 2022, Hohn was the single biggest individual donor to Extinction Rebellion. [20]

    In April 2020, he made a £2.4 million donation to purchase around 100 SAMBA II machines to test for COVID-19.[21]

    Personal life

    He married Jamie Cooper, a fellow Harvard graduate student from Chicago, whom he had met at a party during his studies.[22] Upon marriage, they took each other's surnames to become Cooper-Hohn, although he is still widely known as Hohn. The couple went on to have four children, including triplets.[23]

    In 2013, it was reported that Hohn had begun divorce proceedings with his wife.[24] In November 2014, he was set to pay his American-born ex-wife $500 million,[25] in what was thought to be the biggest divorce settlement ever awarded by an English court.[26] In December 2014, he was ordered to pay his ex-wife £337 million.[27]

    Hohn was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to philanthropy and international development.

    Hohn practices yoga and does not eat meat.[28]

    He is married to Kylie Hohn (nee Richardson), who has a PhD from Harvard University and has taught at Harvard and the University of Cambridge.[29] [30] She is the CEO of LightEn, an organisation of which they are the co-founders.[29]

    Notes and References

    1. https://ciff.org/team/chris-hohn/ CHRIS HOHN Co-Founder
    2. News: Hedge fund boss Chris Hohn gives away £1bn in five years . London . The Daily Telegraph . Louise . Armitstead . 1 June 2011.
    3. News: Bloomberg Billionaire Index. en. Bloomberg . 10 June 2022. 0140-0460.
    4. Web site: Court documents. 2014. www.judiciary.uk . 3 April 2020.
    5. Web site: Çam. Deniz. From Azim Premji to Carlos Slim: The World's Most Generous Billionaires Outside Of The U.S.. 23 July 2021. Forbes. en.
    6. Web site: 1 March 2021. Billionaire hedge fund boss pays himself UK record of £343m. 1 March 2021. the Guardian. en.
    7. Web site: THE CHILDREN'S INVESTMENT FUND FOUNDATION (UK). Companies House. 26 April 2016.
    8. News: Chris Hohn profile: Britain's biggest charity donor . London . The Daily Telegraph . Andy . Bloxham . 20 June 2008.
    9. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/da1a54f0-5277-11e1-9f55-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2DEp8INcg TCI goes where other funds fear to tread – FT.com
    10. Web site: TCI Hedge Fund in Britain Ends Ties to Charitable Arm. 18 June 2014.
    11. Web site: Hedge fund boss pays himself £200m despite fund's profits falling. 4 December 2019. The Guardian. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20191204222706/https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/04/hedge-fund-boss-pays-himself-200m-despite-funds-profits-falling . 2019-12-04 . 16 February 2020.
    12. News: The Highest-Earning Hedge Fund Managers & Traders. Forbes. 24 November 2016.
    13. News: Extinction Rebellion backer Chris Hohn builds £630m stake in Heathrow. Gill. Oliver. 19 October 2019. The Daily Telegraph. 20 October 2019. en-GB. 0307-1235.
    14. Web site: Gara. Antoine. Billionaire Chris Hohn Explains Why Increased Disclosure Will Force Companies To Cut Their Carbon Emissions. 8 August 2021. Forbes. en.
    15. News: Editor . Ben Martin, Banking . 2023-12-08 . TCI founder Chris Hohn pays himself £275m dividend . . en . 2023-12-08 . 0140-0460.
    16. News: Kruppa . Miles . Activist Investor TCI Calls on Google Parent Alphabet to Slash Costs . 2022-11-26 . Wall Street Journal . 15 November 2022 . en-US.
    17. News: 2022-11-15 . Investor TCI urges Alphabet to cut excessive headcount, costs . en . Reuters . 2022-11-26.
    18. Web site: 2023-01-23 . Christopher Hohn wants Alphabet to lay off 20% of its staff and cut employee pay Fortune . 2023-01-24 . https://web.archive.org/web/20230123162647/https://fortune.com/2023/01/23/christopher-hohn-rishi-sunak-old-boss-tci-fund-management-letter-to-alphabet-sundar-pichai/ . 23 January 2023 .
    19. News: Extinction Rebellion funded by charity set up by one of Britain's richest men. Dixon. Hayley. 10 October 2019. The Daily Telegraph. 20 October 2019. en-GB. 0307-1235.
    20. Web site: Neate . Rupert . 2022-01-17 . Extinction Rebellion donor leads world's top-performing hedge fund . 2022-08-05 . The Guardian . en.
    21. Web site: Craig Brierley Communications team . Rapid COVID-19 diagnostic test developed by Cambridge team to be deployed in hospitals | University of Cambridge . Cam.ac.uk . 2 April 2020. 3 April 2020.
    22. News: Timmons . Heather . The Children's Investment Fund and Its Nonprofit Twin . The New York Times . 26 June 2008 . 28 November 2012.
    23. News: Hedge-fund couple Chris Hohn and Jamie Cooper-Hohn on track for Britain's first billion pound divorce . The Daily Telegraph . 18 June 2014.
    24. News: Royal Mail hedge fund tycoon Chris Hohn posts his divorce papers . London . The Daily Telegraph . Richard . Eden . 27 October 2013.
    25. Web site: Chris Hohn's Activist Hedge Fund Has Big First Half Of 2015 . Forbes.com . 28 April 2016.
    26. News: Chris Hohn in record-breaking $530m divorce settlement . London . The Financial Times . Jane . Croft . 28 November 2014.
    27. Web site: Sir Chris Hohn ordered to hand over £337m in one of England's biggest divorce cases . . 12 December 2014 . 28 April 2016.
    28. News: 5 March 2021. The very private life of Sir Chris Hohn – the man paid £1m a day. 5 August 2021. The Guardian. en.
    29. Web site: LightEn founders . LightEn . 10 September 2022.
    30. News: Marsh . Alec . Inside the exclusive Zulma Reyo School of Consciousness retreat for business leaders . 10 September 2022 . Spear's . 22 March 2022.