The wife of a hedge fund manager at the centre of London’s most expensive divorce case has told how she and her former husband realised they had the “same values” when he took her to see the film ‘Malcolm X’.
According to Bloomberg, Jamie Cooper-Hohn, the soon-to-be ex-wife of billionaire fund manager Christopher Hohn, told the court that she had originally turned down an offer of a date by Mr Hohn, fearing that all he wanted to do with his life was make money.
However, Mr Hohn was able to change her mind: “He then invited me to see ‘Malcolm X’ and went on a campaign to show me that we had the same values,” Mrs Cooper-Hohn testified.
Malcolm X was a radical and divisive American civil rights activist who was accused by more moderate figures of preaching violence and racism against non-blacks. Many accused him and the Nation of Islam – the organisation of which he was a member – of being hatemongering, racist, black supremacist, violent and segregationist.
The couple spent the following 20 years building one of the world’s largest charities, fuelled by the hedge fund, TCI. The fund has been one of the most successful, recording only one money-losing year when Lehman Brothers collapsed.
Mrs Cooper-Hohn ran the couple’s charity, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, until September last year. The charity helps fight child poverty in developing countries, and has in the past received a third of TCI’s management fee and 0.5 percent of profits over 11 percent.
Mr Hohn told the court that his charitable interests have now shifted towards climate change.
Bloomberg reports that Mrs Cooper-Hohn depicted her husband in court as angry and controlling, saying that was “constantly threatening” her as their marriage fell apart: “Chris has been exceptionally aggressive towards me and the board has acknowledged that.”
Since their split, Mr Hohn no longer contributes to the charity and it is no longer linked to TCI.
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