The Woohoo! Report

A City hedge fund manager has given almost half a billion pounds away in Britain’s biggest ever single charity donation. Chris Hohn gave away £466 million to the Children’s Investment Fund (TCI), which is run by his wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn. The charity benefits projects in Africa and the developing world.

The Hohns’ donation brings their total charitable donations to £800 million in just four years, making them the UK’s most generous philanthropists.

It dwarves large gifts from more well-known donors: Lord Sainsbury has given away £233 million whilst David and Heather Stevens, founders of the Admiral Insurance company, gave away £100 million.

The Hohns are part of a group called the ‘new philanthropists’ who are incredibly rich, want to donate to charity, but also have a hand in what happens to the money.

Mr Hohn, 41, who has a fearsome City reputation, set up TCI in 2003. A percentage of the earnings go directly to the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF).

The charity’s main focus is helping children who have been [or are at risk of being] orphaned by AIDS in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Ethiopia and India.

In Africa, it is also helping with agriculture, training mentors and supporting educational initiatives.

It is run along the same lines as a business with American-born Mrs Cooper-Hohn, 43, as its president. Her role involves careful analysis of each cause to find those which will produce significant change.

In an interview Mrs Cooper-Hohn said: ‘One of the things that attracted Chris and I was the shared sense of something that is larger than ourselves and the thrill that we can have a positive impact.

‘We work well together – he is passionate about helping, I’m more pragmatic about it. The aim is that Chris’s money will result in long lasting and radical change.’

Mr Hohn, who lives with his wife and four children in a £2m townhouse in North West London, earns in excess of £150m a year, making him one of the highest paid fund managers in the city.

He is a graduate of Southampton University and Harvard business school, where he met his wife. He is the son of a white Jamaican car mechanic who emigrated to Britain in 1960.

Mr Hohn raised eyebrows in 2006 when he gave £50.4 million to charity, but since then the donations have sky-rocketed. Last year the cash injection was £235.8 million, making CIFF Britain’s fastest growing foundation.

The Hohns are part of an unprecedented rise in charitable giving from City and business leaders.

Scottish billionaire Sir Tom Hunter has said he will give more than £1billion away, but that is over his entire lifetime.

Peter Cruddas, the founder of the internet securities dealer CMC, has set up the Peter Cruddas Foundation to handle his donations. He has endowed the fund with £100 million.

Investors and politicians have queued up to praise Mr Hohn. Hedge fund philanthropist Arpad ‘Arki’ Busson, former boyfriend of supermodel Elle Macpherson, once said: ‘I think Chris is one of the best investors and traders of his generation. He is one of the few hedge fund managers to have mastered both disciplines. In addition, he and his wife are very astute philanthropists who have taken charitable giving to a new dimension.’

After the charity gave £2.9 million to HIV and Aids work conducted by Bill Clinton’s foundation, the former president said that the Hohns’ ‘marriage of business and philanthropy provides a great tool to effect serious change in the developing world.’

Story taken from Mail Online [source]

The old advertising slogan “Guinness is Good for You” may be true after all, according to researchers.

A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as an aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks.

Drinking lager does not yield the same benefits, experts from University of Wisconsin told a conference in the US.

Guinness were told to stop using the slogan decades ago – and the firm still makes no health claims for the drink.

The Wisconsin team tested the health-giving properties of stout against lager by giving it to dogs who had narrowed arteries similar to those in heart disease.

They found that those given the Guinness had reduced clotting activity in their blood, but not those given lager.

Heart trigger

Clotting is important for patients who are at risk of a heart attack because they have hardened arteries.

A heart attack is triggered when a clot lodges in one of these arteries supplying the heart.

Many patients are prescribed low-dose aspirin as this cuts the ability of the blood to form these dangerous clots.

The researchers told a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida, that the most benefit they saw was from 24 fluid ounces of Guinness – just over a pint – taken at mealtimes.

They believe that “antioxidant compounds” in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.

However, Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, said: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.”

The company now runs advertisements that call for “responsible drinking”.

A spokesman for Brewing Research International, which conducts research for the industry, said she would be “wary” of placing the health benefits of any alcohol brand above another.

She said: “We already know that most of the clotting effects are due to the alcohol itself, rather than any other ingredients.

“It is possible that there is an extra effect due to the antioxidants in Guinness – but I would like to see this research repeated.”

She said that reviving the old adverts for Guinness might be problematic – at least in the EU.

Draft legislation could outlaw any health claims in adverts for alcohol in Europe, she said.

Feelgood factor

The original campaign in the 1920s stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan was born.

[source]