How billionaire investor Ken Griffin makes and spends his money: he stopped donating to Harvard, but he’s splurged on beachfront mega-mansions, Covid-19 relief efforts … and the Republican Party
- Griffin is among the world’s biggest private supporters of charities and non-profit organisations, having donated over US$2 billion to philanthropic projects
- He splurged around US$500 million on two paintings, and bought America’s most expensive house, a four-floor penthouse in Manhattan, for US$238 million
Griffin made his US$37 billion fortune through business and spends much of it on philanthropy, educational donations, record-breaking properties, super expensive art and private jets, per Forbes.
While Harvard deals with the fallout of his decision, here is a closer look at Griffin and how he makes (and spends) his billions.
Ken Griffin founded investment firm Citadel
Harvard played a big part in Griffin’s financial journey. It was at the university that he first started investing, according to his biography in the Milken Institute. He installed a satellite dish in his dorm room in 1987 to get real-time stock information. He began investing with US$265,000 in capital, according to Bloomberg. Three years later, he started his own investment firm, Citadel, with US$4.2 million of investor money, reported Business Insider.
Reflecting on the events leading to this, Griffin told Bloomberg that the crash of 1987 led to him becoming a “boy genius”. “I knew I was boy lucky, because I was shorting the market intentionally, but outside investors went, ‘This person is a genius, he made money in the crash’ … it gave me a track record early on that was attractive to investors,” he recalled.
Citadel Securities, a separate market making firm also founded by Ken Griffin, has become a global leader in the field, serving over 1,600 clients including many of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds and central banks. Forbes reports that Citadel manages more than US$60 billion in assets.
The firm has made him the world’s most successful hedge fund manager in terms of earnings, per Reuters, with Bloomberg estimating he may have around US$9 billion in personal assets in the company’s funds.
He’s big on philanthropy, donating US$2 billion so far
