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When Chris Rokos decided to donate a record £190m to the University of Cambridge to set up a “school of government” this week, it became the latest mega project carried out in the hedge fund billionaire’s name.
The publicity-shy tycoon has spent much of the last decade presiding over one of England’s most expensive home renovations ever, of the 200-room Tottenham House mansion near Marlborough in Wiltshire, adding a tennis pavilion and private cinema in the £175m revamp.
Now, a new challenge begins. After making the single biggest donation to any UK university in modern times, the Oxford University graduate will lend his name to the project at its Boat Race rival.
The donation comes after he amassed an estimated £2.6bn fortune, largely from Rokos Capital Management (RCM), which he launched in 2015.
He said the school would focus on the crossovers in policy, science and emerging technologies, with academics from all backgrounds.
“If this school were populated only by people with centrist, socially liberal views like me, then the school will have failed,” said Rokos in a video released by the university. “We need a broad diversity of thought and intellectual viewpoints.”
Rokos, 55, went to a state primary school before being offered a scholarship to Eton college and achieved a first at Oxford. He credits the “opportunity of education” for setting him on the path to become one of the UK’s richest individuals.
After university, he entered banking, joining UBS before moving to Goldman Sachs, working on complex financial instruments – first derivative structuring, then swap market making and eventually proprietary trading.
However, it was a move to Credit Suisse that would set him on the path to star trader status.
Hired by Alan Howard, he was among a group of traders who left to set up their own asset management business, called Brevan Howard, in 2002.
Over the next decade he reportedly made $4bn (£3bn) in profits for investors and around £600m for himself by the time he left in 2012.
Rokos, a former Tory party donor who is one of the UK’s biggest taxpayers, set up a family office in Mayfair, but the desire to return to trading resulted in a legal dispute with his former employer over a five-year non-compete clause.
An out-of-court settlement allowed him to launch RCM 11 years ago, and it has become one of the most successful so-called macro firms, making bets on macroeconomic trends.
RCM manages more than £22bn and employs 350 people, with offices in London, New York, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.
Rokos – one of the most successful hedge fund managers of his generation – paid himself almost £500m in the year to the end of March, according to Companies House filings, as RCM performed strongly amid volatile markets.
Earlier this year, it emerged RCM was in talks to hire Peter Mandelson in an advisory role. The recent revelations regarding the extent of the former UK business secretary’s ties to the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein put paid to the talks.
While Rokos has studiously attempted to stay out of the limelight – when he launched a new £500m fund in 2007 he even refused to release a photo of himself to accompany promotional literature – his divorce court battle lifted the lid on the lifestyle of the uber-wealthy.
His marriage to Veronica Antonio ended following a separation agreement in 2009 but was not finalised until 2016 in a court action that made headlines for the annual budget submitted by Antonio.
It included a claim of £10,555 for wine, costing of an average of £50 per bottle, and £20,000 per year on clothing and toys for the couple’s child.
More recently, Rokos has crossed swords with the local council over the extensive work on Tottenham House, the historic Grade I-listed mansion formerly owned by Lord Cardigan.
As well as a basement squash court and picture gallery, the plans proposed a “subterranean family link” between the main house, stables and a planned pool house.
The grandiose renovation at the property in the Savernake Forest, which at times had 500 tradespeople on site, will serve as a lasting reminder of Rokos’s vast wealth.
