Started. The tycoon tells

you don’t want is a bullshitter who specialises in looking very confident about things”.

Harding has three sons from earlier relationships and a three -year- old daughter with his second wife, Claudia, who takes a close interest in both business and philanthropy. “At the moment she is a junior member of the partnership because I made much of the money before I married her, but her influence is fairly undeniable.”

Missing from this equation are the conspicuous trappings of wealth. Sure, Harding enjoys fine wine, cigars, keeps homes in Chelsea and Oxfordshire, a BMW 5 Series, ardently follows Chelsea and flies privately for convenience. But you would be unlikely to find him lolling on a superyacht moored next to Sir Philip Green’s.

“I wouldn’t say I wore a hair shirt or anything like that,” he says. “I like nice things in life but of course a source of anxiety probably to many rich people is that you don’t want to spoil your children by bringing them up in an atmosphere of intense privilege.” No chance of that if his 55th birthday last week is anything to go by. Harding took t wo of his sons, aged 13 and nine, walking in the Yorkshire Dales. E ALSO contributed £3.5 million to the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign to stay in the European Union, and saw his f u n d s make a cool $1 billion-plus (£760 million) gain in the days after his side lost.

“I am a little nervous on behalf of London but I am kind of optimistic — because I am always optimistic,” he says of the future. “If I was in charge of the country I wo u l d p l a y to its strengths. Unfortunately that is elitism, isn’t it? There is this idea in England that we have got to try and level it out if anybody is any good at anything.”

Across the Atlantic donors are giving more and giving earlier. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has blazed a trail in health and educ ation, boosted by investor Warren Buffett’s billions, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to give away 99 per cent of his shares during his lifetime.

H a r d i n g h a s n’ t ma d e a ny such commitment but he l e ave s the impression that he is just getting going. Certainly, he is earning money faster than he can give it away. The £205 million dividend plus pay that Harding received l a s t ye a r c o mpares wel l wi t h t he £87 million extrac ted in 2011 and, unusually for someone in his position, nothing is shielded from the taxman.

There will be more to come because Winton is motoring: nine offices and counting and $34 billion of funds under management. Although some philanthropists such as Gates give up work to focus on charity, Harding plans a parallel career for the foreseeable future.

“A lot of people would say that is really, really stupid. Spending a lot of gruelling effort to make money and then having a lot of gruelling effort to give it away again: exactly what is the point of that? I do respect people who say that is completely pointless.” He smiles. “But making a lot of money and having nothing to do with it is equally pointless.”