£940k-a-day boss with Britain’s biggest pay packet
(and he’s already forked out for UK’s costliest ever divorce)
A BILLIONAIRE financier has paid himself £ 350million after profits at his hedge fund soared.
Chris hohn’s annual package last year is the largest ever in the UK, beating the £323million racked up by denise Coates of Bet365 in 2018.
at £940,000 a day, it is 9,000 times the average salary and 1,700 times that of Boris Johnson.
the payout is based on profits surging by 66 per cent to £498million at the Children’s investment Fund.
Set up by Sir Chris in 2003, its London headquarters are in mayfair but the holding company is based in the Cayman islands tax haven.
it holds big stakes in Visa, microsoft and google.
at the height of the financial crisis the company struggled and in 2010 recorded an 80 per cent fall in profits.
aside from making Sir Chris a billionaire, the company is best known for employing Rishi Sunak.
the Chancellor worked at the firm from 2004 to 2009, becoming a partner in 2006. the aggressive tactics of the Children’s Fund as a shareholder in dutch bank aBn amro led to its sale to Royal Bank of Scotland, which was seen as a key reason for RBS’s near collapse.
Sir Chris, whose firm invests around £23billion on behalf of clients, has insisted the deal was his and not mr Sunak’s.
other executives to receive eye-watering payouts include Steve Schwarzman, chief executive of US private equity giant Blackstone. he took home £437million in 2020.
the 74-year-old received £61.9million in compensation and £375million in dividends from his Blackstone shares. his net worth is calculated by Forbes at £10.8billion.
‘executive compensation is directly tied to investor and shareholder performance,’ a Blackstone spokesman said.
in 2014, Sir Chris was on the wrong end of the UK’s biggest ever divorce settlement. a judge in the high Court awarded his former wife, Jamie Cooper-hohn, £353million in cash and £27million in property.
Last october, the financier slammed investment giants for acting ‘like sheep’ on climate change. Sir Chris wrote to asset managers urging them to step up their efforts to force companies to become more environmentally friendly.