Chris Hohn

Christopher Hohn
Born	Christopher Anthony Hohn Addlestone, Surrey, United Kingdom
Occupation(s)	Hedge fund manager, philanthropist
Known for	Founder of The Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI), activist investor
Notable work	Founder of The Children's Investment Fund Management; Say on Climate campaign

Sir Christopher Anthony Hohn KCMG (born October 1966) is a British billionaire known for his role as a hedge fund manager.

In 2003, Hohn established The Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI), a prominent hedge fund emphasizing value investing. Initially, the profits generated by TCI were distributed proportionally to The Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a registered charity dedicated to enhancing the welfare of impoverished children in developing nations. He is widely acknowledged as an activist investor.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Hohn’s net worth is approximately $8.85 billion, while Forbes estimates it at $9.5 billion in 2025. This places him among the top 350 wealthiest people worldwide and ranks him as one of Harvard Business School's most distinguished alumni. By 2014, he had contributed over $4.5 billion to The Children's Investment Fund Foundation. In 2019, Forbes recognized him as one of the most generous philanthropists globally outside of the United States. More recently, Hohn has emerged as a prominent advocate for urgent climate initiatives and a major donor to environmental efforts.

Early life

Christopher Anthony Hohn was born in October 1966 in Addlestone, Surrey, United Kingdom. His father, Paul, a car mechanic of European heritage born in Jamaica, relocated to Britain in 1960, while his mother worked as a legal secretary from East Sussex.

He attended St Paul's County Secondary School in Addlestone from 1979 to 1983, where he achieved 13 O Levels. Hohn earned first-class honours in accounting and business economics from the University of Southampton in 1988. Encouraged by an academic advisor, he applied to Harvard Business School, completing his MBA in 1993 as a Baker Scholar, an accolade awarded to the top five percent of students.

Career

Following graduation, Hohn joined private equity firm Apax Partners in 1994. Two years later, he transitioned to hedge fund Perry Capital on Wall Street, where he was appointed head of its London office by 1998. During his period at Perry, his earnings reportedly reached approximately £75 million.

In 2003, Hohn launched his own hedge fund, The Children's Investment Fund (TCI). The fund consistently contributed to its affiliated charitable organization, The Children's Investment Fund Foundation, which was overseen by his wife. Initially, the arrangement involved transferring 0.5% of assets annually plus an additional 0.5% for each year that returns exceeded 11%, designed as an incentive for performance. After divorce proceedings began in 2012, formal connections between TCI and the foundation were dissolved; contractual donations ceased but discretionary contributions continued on occasion.

In 2018, Hohn received £200 million in dividends from TCI, slightly exceeding the fund’s profits that year—a decrease from $274 million in 2017 and $364 million in 2016. His earnings of $250 million in 2015 placed him twelfth among the highest-paid hedge fund managers worldwide.

By 2019, Hohn acquired a €730 million stake in Heathrow Airport through investment entities holding an aggregate four percent interest in Spanish multinational Ferrovial. Between March 2019 and March 2020, he paid himself $479 million—marking the largest single individual payout recorded in the UK during that period.

Consistent with TCI’s principles, Hohn initiated the "Say on Climate" campaign aimed at encouraging corporations to publicly report greenhouse gas emissions and climate strategies while granting shareholders advisory votes on these plans. Early participants included companies such as Aena, Unilever, Glencore, and Canadian National Railway. This initiative has received both endorsement and criticism.

In December 2023, Hohn was awarded a £275 million dividend from TCI Fund Management.

Investor activism

In November 2022, Chris Hohn, acting on behalf of TCI, addressed an open letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, advocating for a reduction in Google's workforce and urging enhanced measures to curtail losses at its autonomous vehicle division, Waymo. Subsequently, on January 20, 2023, Alphabet announced the elimination of 12,000 positions, representing roughly 6% of its employees. On that same day, Hohn pushed for additional workforce reductions amounting to 20% and called on leadership to tackle the issue of excessive staff remuneration.

Donations

In 2019, Hohn contributed £50,000 to the environmental advocacy group Extinction Rebellion, supplemented by a further £150,000 from the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. By January 2022, he had become the largest individual benefactor to Extinction Rebellion.

During April 2020, he donated £2.4 million to facilitate the acquisition of approximately 100 SAMBA II devices used for COVID-19 testing.

In April 2025, in response to funding cuts from the Trump administration's USAID program, Hohn provided financial support to MANA Nutrition in Georgia to sustain the production of peanut butter paste aimed at combating child malnutrition.

Personal life

He wed Jamie Cooper, a fellow Harvard graduate student originally from Chicago whom he met during his academic tenure. Upon marriage, they merged their surnames into Cooper-Hohn; however, he is predominantly recognized by the surname Hohn. The couple had four children together, including triplets.

Divorce proceedings commenced in 2013. By November 2014, a settlement was reached requiring him to pay his former spouse $500 million—one of the most substantial divorce awards granted by an English court. In December 2014, a payment order for £337 million was issued.

In recognition of his contributions to philanthropy and international development, Hohn was named Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 2014 Birthday Honours.

He maintains a vegetarian lifestyle and practices yoga regularly.

He is married to Kylie Hohn (née Richardson), who earned her PhD from Harvard University and has held teaching positions at both Harvard and the University of Cambridge. Together, they co-founded LightEn, an organisation dedicated to conscious leadership, where she serves as CEO.