TCI Fund Management

TCI Fund Management posted $19 billion in profits in 2025, the highest dollar profit of any hedge fund globally that year.

To understand how a fund gets there, you have to start with the man who built it and the ups and downs that shaped his investing philosophy.

The Making of an Investor

Sir Chris Hohn grew up in Addlestone, Surrey, about 20 miles south of London. His father was car mechanic, and his mother was a legal secretary. That modest background taught him the importance of work ethic, which he has never lost.

He wanted to be a doctor until he discovered he couldn't stand the sight of blood. He thought if a career in medicine is off the table, he should do something in business. So he did.

While studying accounting and economics at Southampton University, One of his professors there, Maurice Pinto, a Harvard MBA, suggested Hohn apply to Harvard Business School and recommended him.

Hohn graduated from Harvard Business School in 1993 as a Baker Scholar (top 5% of the class.) His classmates included Timothy Barakett of Atticus Capital, another activist investor who would later cross paths with Hohn on some of the highest-profile activist campaigns in European corporate history.

After HBS, Hohn spent a short stint at a consulting firm, which is hard to resist if you know, went to HBS. He moved back to London in 1994 to work for the private equity firm Apax Partners.

The Perry Capital Years

After two years at Apax, Hohn was ready to move again. He returned to the U.S. to marry his wife Jamie Cooper. He visited Seth Klarman at Baupost Group, a fellow HBS alumnus, and offered to work for free just to learn, despite being having no money. Klarman turned him down, believing Hohn wouldn't stick around. But Klarman did refer Hohn to his friend Richard Perry, founder of Perry Capital, because of the Baker Scholar credential.

The lore goes that Perry told Hohn there was a job but no desk, and Hohn said he would bring his own. Lore or not, Hohn joined and stayed for seven years.

In 1998, Hohn moved to London to open Perry's U.K. office. In the spring of 2000, he launched the Perry Capital European Fund. Europe at that time was loaded with privatizations, restructurings, and cheap stocks, a perfect environment for an event-driven approach. The fund grew to over $1 billion in three years, and Hohn put up 20%+ annualized returns during that stretch.

Starting TCI

In 2003, Hohn left Perry Capital to start The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI). He told prospective clients he would donate a third of the 1.5 percent management fee to the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, plus an additional 0.5 percent of assets in any year the fund returned 11 percent or more. (After his divorce from Jamie Cooper, that arrangement was scrapped and TCI now contributes to the foundation on a discretionary basis.)