GB News owner shares in £720m hedge profit

GB NEWS owner Sir Paul Marshall is to share a pot of more than £720m after his London-based hedge fund posted a surge in profits.

Sir Paul is among a group of 23 partners at Marshall Wace who will split the money after the company’s revenues soared by nearly two-thirds to £1.5bn in the year to February, driven by a surge in performance fees on the back of bumper returns.

Accounts filed at Companies House show that profits at Marshall Wace hit £722.8m for the year, with £322m being paid to a single partner who the company did not identify. The group’s members include another corporate entity.

Sir Paul founded the company with Ian Wace in 1997 and it has grown into one of the world’s top hedge funds, managing about $60bn (£49bn) in assets.

Sir Paul and Mr Wace each have a net worth of £680m, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

In August, Sir Paul bought out the American entertainment giant Warner Bros Discovery and GB News co-founders

Andrew Cole and Mark Schneider of their stake in the network alongside Legatum, a Dubai-based group founded by the billionaire Christopher Chandler.

Sir Paul, whose son Winston was a member of the band Mumford and Sons, has been a prominent backer of Brexit and supported a £60m fundraising of GB News last year, the Right-leaning television channel.

In 2017, he wrote: “This is a huge opportunity. Our ambition is that the UK should be a champion of free trade, open and outward looking to the world and built on strong institutions.”

Marshall Wace has offices in London, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. It operates several longshort funds, which is an investment strategy that seeks to take a long position in underpriced stocks while selling short overpriced shares.

It currently has sizeable bets against British retailers Asos and Next, as well as B&Q owner Kingfisher.

The fund also promoted three employees to partner level who will share in the bumper profits – Matthew Rooney, head of operations; and Li Zhu and David Jurenka, both senior quant managers.

Marshall Wace declined to comment.