Rishi Sunak’s old hedge fund boss paid himself $1.9 million a day this year
Share Share
S&P 500
4,055.12
-21.45(-0.53%)
Dow 30
34,293.55
-101.46(-0.29%)
Nasdaq
11,396.55
-85.90(-0.75%)
Russell 2000
1,883.64
+1.96(+0.10%)
Crude Oil
79.90
-1.32(-1.63%)
Gold
1,809.40
-5.80(-0.32%)
Silver
23.27
+0.43(+1.90%)
EUR/USD
1.0519
-0.0010(-0.09%)
10-Yr Bond
3.5390
+0.0100(+0.28%)
GBP/USD
1.2272
+0.0016(+0.13%)
USD/JPY
134.6470
-0.6590(-0.49%)
BTC-USD
16,961.08
+19.62(+0.12%)
CMC Crypto 200
402.70
+1.28(+0.32%)
FTSE 100
7,556.23
-2.26(-0.03%)
Nikkei 225
27,777.90
-448.18(-1.59%)
Peter Macdiarmid—Getty Images
The U.K. is in the throes of a cost-of-living crisis, with real wages declining at a record rate this year—but amid the economic turmoil, one of the country’s wealthiest people cashed in on a record payday as his hedge fund’s profits skyrocketed.
Billionaire Chris Hohn, who founded TCI Fund Management in 2003 and serves as its director, paid himself a dividend of almost $690 million this year, documents filed with the British government this week showed—the equivalent of almost $1.9 million a day.
The payout is believed to be the highest annual amount ever paid to a single person in Britain. It is more than 15,000 times higher than the U.K.’s median salary of £33,280 ($40,585), and broke Hohn’s own record that was set when he paid himself $479 million last year.
Representatives for Hohn were not available for comment when contacted by Fortune.
Hohn, a Harvard Business School graduate and son of a Jamaican car mechanic, owns 100% of TCI—the world’s best performing large hedge fund in 2019—and has a net worth of $8.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His record dividend came after the London-based hedge fund—where serving Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a multimillionaire, worked for Hohn between 2006 and 2009—saw its pre-tax profits dramatically jump more than 50% year-on-year to surpass $1 billion.
TCI holds stakes in companies including [hotlink]Alphabet[/hotlink], [hotlink]Microsoft[/hotlink] and [hotlink]Visa[/hotlink], according to the Guardian.
Last month, Hohn wrote to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, revealing TCI’s “significant” stake in the Google parent company amounted to $6 billion. In the letter, Hohn urged Pichai to take “aggressive action” to reduce Alphabet’s costs, insisting that “the company has too many employees.”
While TCI is headquartered in London’s high-end Mayfair district, it is owned by The Children’s Investment Fund Management (Cayman) Limited—a parent company based in the tax haven Cayman Islands.
Hohn himself is one of the U.K.’s most prominent philanthropists, giving away $386 million through his charity the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in 2019.
One of his major philanthropic endeavors is funding efforts to alleviate the climate crisis, which he has made a central pillar of both his charity and his hedge fund.
In the past, he has publicly called for firms that don’t make climate disclosures to be punished, and TCI has threatened to dump its stakes in companies that have no emissions reduction strategies in place. The hedge fund requires companies it invests in to make annual disclosures on their carbon emissions.
Do You Want Straight Forward Views On What's Happening With The Stock Market, Direct to Your Inbox?
Help yourself with our FREE email newsletter designed to help you protect and grow your portfolio. Sign up now:
By opting in you agree to our Privacy Policy. You also agree to receive emails from us and our affiliates. Remember that you can opt-out any time, we hate spam too!