£1.4BILLION
That’s the whopping payday for Rishi Sunak’s old boss as he tops hedge fund rich list
Rishi sunak’s former boss has become the world’s best-paid hedge fund tycoon after pocketing £1.4billion in a year.
Christopher hohn made the cash – the equivalent of £3.8million a day – from betting on technology firms including Microsoft and Google’s parent company Alphabet.
The secretive surrey-born financier was one of five hedge fund managers said to have earned more than $1billion (£770million) each in 2019.
The other four in the Bloomberg Billionaires index are Americans and they include steven Cohen, the minority owner of the New York Mets baseball team.
sir Christopher was the most successful after guiding his firm – The Children’s investment Fund Management – to an annual return of 41 per cent. This triggered an estimated bonanza for the 53- year- old of between £1.1billion and £1.4billion.
Mr sunak, who worked as a junior analyst for the fund between 2006 and 2009, may take a keen interest in the payout. The Chancellor is scrambling to find cash to pay for the Covid crisis, which has pushed the national debt above £2trillion and is expected to send government borrowing beyond £350billion this year.
Experts have warned fresh lockdowns are set to blow another huge hole in the public finances with businesses forced to shut down and more jobs lost.
sir Christopher’s extraordinary success will be frowned upon by many on Labour’s hard Left.
Jeremy Corbyn put hedge fund supremo Crispin Odey among a string of figures he planned to make pay more tax if he won power.
sir Christopher was named last year as the UK’s seventh biggest taxpayer, contributing almost £65million to the Treasury’s coffers in 2017/18, according to analysis by The sunday Times.
his fortune has previously been estimated at anywhere between £1.3billion and £3.8billion.
Mr Odey is known for his extravalanthropists, gance lifestyle but sir Christopher studiously avoids the spotlight.
But his bitter divorce from his American-born wife of 15 years made headlines – as well as a major dent in his finances – in 2014.
he was ordered to pay Jamie Cooper £ 337million, which was thought to be the largest ever divorce settlement in Britain.
The couple fought over assets including homes in London, the West indies and the United states.
During the case sir Christopher described himself as an ‘unbelievable money maker’ while insisting: ‘i don’t really care about money.’
he has handed a lot of it away and is one of the country’s greatest phigiving billions of pounds to charity through The Children’s investment Fund Foundation. This saw him receive a knighthood in 2014.
But his career as a hedge fund manager has still made him the target of criticism, with Labour accusing the industry of trying to cash in on the Covid-19 pandemic by betting against big firms.
hedge funds differ from ordinary funds in that they also gamble on a firm’s stock price falling. This is known in the trade as ‘shorting’.
The practice was blamed for helping to fuel the financial crisis, as hedge funds took positions against big banks and helped drive down their share prices.
Unlike many of his peers in the rarefied world of hedge funds – the unofficial capital being Mayfair in London – sir Christopher comes from a fairly humble background.
The father of four is the son of a Jamaican-born car mechanic of European descent who moved to Britain in 1960. his mother was a legal secretary.
he attended the University of southampton and studied at ivy League harvard before pursuing a high-flying career in finance with a spell on Wall street.
TCI was approached for comment last night.
‘Betting against big firms’