Sir Chris Hohn, the hedge funder and Rishi Sunak’s former boss, has given away £86,000 every hour
ir Chris Hohn used to be an unhappy rich man. Today he is an even richer man — worth an estimated £5 billion — but the hedge funder and Rishi Sunak’s former boss has now also found happiness. How? By giving his money away — and feeling the joy.
“If I put you at a table with five starving children and you have a big plate of food, do I need to explain to you why you need to share it?” he says. “Imagine the joy of giving someone clean water or stopping a child from starving to death. If I tell you that you can save a life for $40 or $100, you can’t tell me that’s not a great deal.”
To Hohn, who paid himself a reported £1.5 million a day through his TCI Fund Management last year, life is now simple — and spiritual.
Inspiration struck more than two decades ago when he was awarded a $10 million bonus. “I gave it away to charity,” he says. But understanding his motivation has been a far more recent revelation. “I really didn’t have a clear answer as to why until recently, when I realised that it is a soul urge,” he admits with a nervous laugh.
It was around this time that he met and married his second wife, Dr Kylie Hohn, with whom he has co-founded LightEn, a charity that funds teaching and research into humanitarian education and nondenominational spirituality. Our conversation is peppered with phrases such as “desire of the soul”, the “lower mind” and finding the “divinity within others”.
Climate change is Hohn’s biggest area of giving
It’s not the vocabulary you might expect from a hardened hedge funder who has gained a reputation in the City as someone who takes an aggressive approach to investing and who is notoriously discreet about his private life.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that, while all the work I do is important, one of the most important things is this spiritual education,” he explains. “We have to solve the problem of selfishness in society.”
Hohn, who has four children including a set of triplets, grew up in Addlestone, Surrey. His Jamaican-born father was a car mechanic and his mother a legal secretary. At Southampton University he studied accounting and economics before doing a master’s in business administration at Harvard.
Hohn may be in a better place than he was in his early Wall Street days, starting out as a hedge funder, but he is far from content with the world. A vocal supporter of Extinction Rebellion, he has donated a five-figure sum to the campaigning organisation.
“Speaking personally, I think it is important to change the consciousness of people, because there is too much apathy and too much selfishness — this is a crisis,” Hohn has said. “So instead of focusing on the demonstrations of Extinction Rebellion, let’s focus on what they are saying — [that] we’re burning the world at a fast pace, which is a fact, and how are we going to solve it?
‘This is a crisis’: Hohn is a vocal supporter of Extinction Rebellion
“I was in Kenya and I’ve seen the impact of drought there. People are really struggling in many of these dry areas to grow food, and that’s why [climate change] is my biggest area of giving because it is impacting poor countries in a catastrophic way.”
Hohn has not eaten meat for 20 years and suggests we all do the same in order to protect the planet. He also practises yoga.
Today he is keen to share his revelation about the profundity of philanthropy with fellow Rich Listers. “If they could understand, even on a simple level, the joy they could have by sharing it [their wealth], I think they might all be happier people.
“Even for those who are into philanthropy they are only giving away a half per cent of their wealth. They’re not really doing more than tokenism.”
Philanthropy has given Hohn meaning as well as purpose and he says charity is the reason he makes money — so he can give it away. “What I found was the more money I gave away, the more money came to me. If I hadn’t wanted to give the money away it wouldn’t have come through me, so I do think that’s the secret. It sounds funny but I don’t say it lightly.”
The Giving List
The top 10 most charitable Rich Listers
| Rank | Name | Wealth | Recent donations | Giving index | Charitable work |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sir Chris Hohn | £5bn | £755.2m | 15.1% | Hedge-fund king who started the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, one of the largest in the world with offices in Addis Ababa, Beijing, London, Nairobi and New Delhi. He’s also a big supporter of Extinction Rebellion |
| 2 | Alan Parker | £2.915bn | £401.4m | 13.77% | Born into a family in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the son of a British colonial civil servant. He became Duty Free Shopper’s third-largest shareholder, and his Oak Foundation began from an interest in that business. |
| 3 | Henry Engelhardt and Diane Briere de l’Isle | £863m | £95.5m | 11.07% | The former chief executive of Admiral, and his wife, founded the Moondance Foundation (named after the Van Morrison song) to support young people in Wales |
| 4 | Sir Paul Marshall | £800m | £66.9m | 8.36% | The co-founder and chairman of hedge fund Marshall Wace LLP, his Sequoia Trust, behind Ark Schools, gave £50 million to the London School of Economics in 2022 |
| 5 | Lord Rothschild and family | £825m | £65.6m | 7.95% | The fourth Baron Rothschild is mostly retired, but is renowned for playing a prominent role in arts philanthropy, with donations recently going to the Royal Opera House and Royal Shakespeare Company |
| 6 | Steve Morgan | £785m | £59.6m | 7.59% | The founder of the housebuilder Redrow’s foundation makes a difference to those suffering from disability or disadvantage in Liverpool and north Wales. He has given £50 million to support the Diabetes Grand Challenge |
| 7 | Sir Elton John | £450m | £31.0m | 6.89% | All the funds raised for the Elton John Aids Foundation in the UK and US come from the singer’s performances, events and financial contributions |
| 8 | Lord Edmiston | £1.097bn | £68.1m | 6.2% | Lord Edmiston’s Christian Vision aims to introduce one billion people to Jesus. He is an evangelical billionaire who founded a car dealership empire with a £6,000 redundancy cheque |
| 9 | Andrew Law | £850m | £51.2m | 6.02% | Law co-chairs the Law Family Charitable Foundation with his wife, Zoe. In 2022 they donated £3 million to the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester and £2.9 million to Factory International, a new arts centre in the city |
| 10 | Sir Michael Moritz and Harriet Heyman | £3.333bn | £166.7m | 5% | A Welsh billionaire venture capitalist, philanthropist, author and former journalist. Moritz’s San Francisco-based Crankstart Foundation supports organisations around the world including the University of Oxford |
Source: The Sunday Times Magazine
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