Christopher Hohn

Hohn is known for personally contributing £50,000 (approximately $65,000) to the radical environmental activist organization, Extinction Rebellion (XR),² and using his co-founded charity the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) to contribute an additional £150,000 (approximately $200,000) to the group. ³

Hohn has invested in major industrial companies that use conventional energy sources condemned by XR, personally and through TCI. They include European aircraft manufacturer Airbus,⁴ the Canadian National Railway Company, Canadian Pacific Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad, American defense contractor Raytheon, and the chemicals company Univar Solutions. ⁵

Background

Christopher Hohn is an English hedge fund manager and billionaire philanthropist, born in 1966 to a Jamaican-born car mechanic. Hohn studied at Southampton University before moving to America to study for an MBA at Harvard Business School, where he received the award of Baker Scholar. While studying at Harvard Business School, Hohn met his ex-wife Jaimee Cooper-Hohn (now known as Jaimee Cooper). ⁶

After leaving Harvard Business School, Hohn began working on Wall Street for the hedge fund Perry Capital, where he stayed for seven years and earned an estimated £75 million (approximately $97.5 million). ⁶

After leaving Perry Capital and moving back to the United Kingdom in 2003, Hohn set up his own hedge fund, The Children’s Investment Fund Management (TCI), in 2004 with Cooper. TCI was created to funnel 1% of its assets to the fund’s charitable arm, The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. ⁷

Hohn was ordered to pay £337 million (approximately $440 million) to Cooper in 2014 after the pair divorced. Hohn and Cooper have an ongoing court case as to whether the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the charitable arm of the hedge fund, should be forced to pay £270 million (approximately $350 million) to Big Win Philanthropy, a charity Cooper founded after the divorce. ⁸

Hohn has been listed as one of the top ten earning hedge fund managers in the world and was ranked as one of the 125 richest people in the United Kingdom as of 2019 with a personal fortune of £1.2 billion (approximately $1.56 billion),⁸ but other sources list him as having a total net worth of $5 billion. ⁹ He collected a reported $261 million in dividend payments from TCI in 2018, $274 million in 2017, and $364 million in 2016. ¹⁰

He has been said to use “hardball tactics” with TCI by “scuttling deals, pushing to remove bosses, and battering companies with litigation and threats.” ¹¹

Hohn was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 2014 for his “services to UK philanthropy and international development.” ¹²

Political Activities

After President Donald Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, a policy first outlined in the Reagan administration that requires foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to assure they will not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” if they are to receive family planning aid from the United States in his first administration, Hohn pledged $10 million towards the “She Decides” movement, a pro-abortion-rights global fundraising initiative created by the Dutch Government. ¹³

Hohn is also known for personally contributing £50,000 (approximately $65,000) to the radical environmental activist organization, Extinction Rebellion (XR). ² Extinction Rebellion was created in the United Kingdom in mid-2019 from a network of individuals affiliated with Earth First! and Occupy Wall Street,¹⁴ and uses tactics such as the mass occupation of major streets and landmarks,¹⁵ property defacement and destruction,¹⁵ and causing public disturbances outside the offices of major media organizations. ¹⁶ Hohn’s co-founded charity, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, also contributed £150,000 (approximately $200,000) to Extinction Rebellion. ³

Hohn also sent a letter to multiple large companies which TCI invests in, including Google and Airbus, stating that TCI would “typically vote against all directors of companies which do not publicly disclose all of their emissions and do not have a credible plan for their reduction,” and warned that TCI will consider selling shares of companies that do not disclose climate risks. Hohn also added that if governments did not force companies to disclose its pollution “investors can force it themselves.” ¹⁷

Hohn claimed that BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, was “full of greenwash” as it prides itself in its environmental credentials but didn’t force companies it invests in to disclose their emissions. Hohn added that “asset owners should fire asset managers that do not require such disclosure.” ¹⁷

Hohn, through TCI, sent letters to top executives of the companies he invests in, pressuring them to enact full “decarbonization of economies (net-zero emissions) by 2050.” The companies include Alphabet Inc, Anthem Inc, and Microsoft. ⁴

Energy Lawsuits

According to a RealClearInvestigations article written on January 6, 2020, Hohn had spent at least $16 million pushing municipalities into introducing litigation against energy companies due to climate change costs since 2017 ¹⁸ Through his Children Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Hohn contributed $7 million of that total to the climate activist group Center for Climate Integrity (CCI). CCI is a project of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD), an environmental policy group headed by climate activist Richard Wiles, who is in favor of taking legal action against fossil fuel and traditional energy organizations. ¹⁸

U.S. Operations

In September 2025, the right-of-center watchdog group Americans for Public Trust (APT) released a report detailing the donations of Christopher Hohn and his Children’s Investment Fund Foundation to U.S.-based left-of-center groups. The group found that Hohn had donated $553 million between 2014 and 2023 to nearly 40 U.S.-based groups as part of an effort that APT described “as part of a broader scheme to push DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and radical environmentalist policies in America.” ¹⁹

Among the donations were $265,000 to Extinction Rebellion US. APT points out that, “XR’s American affiliate has called for “rebellion against the U.S. government for its criminal inaction on the ecological crisis,” and in 2019, claimed that its volunteers had “seized” over 20 intersections in Washington, D.C. during a protest. Dozens of the collective’s members were arrested in the nation’s capital, as well as in New York during an earlier protest that year, with additional arrests in other chaotic protests abroad.” ¹⁹

Hohn also donated $7 million to the “climate litigation efforts” of the Center for Climate Integrity. The group “courted and encouraged elected officials in several U.S. cities to bring lawsuits against energy companies over claims that they are responsible for climate change.” In 2018, CIFF announced that Hohn would spend another $500 million over the next five years to combat climate change. ¹⁹

APT also reported that Hohn donated over $11 million to what APT called a “behemoth liberal dark money nonprofit network” that was administered by the for-profit company Arabella Advisors through two of the groups it administers, the New Venture Fund and the Windward Fund. ¹⁹

Other groups that APT reported Hohn supported were $68 million to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, $51 million to the World Resources Institute, $17.5 million to the Natural Resources Defense Council, $36 million to the Sunrise Project, $17 million to the Environmental Defense Fund, and $2.6 million to the Rocky Mountain Institute, which has ties to Chinese officials. ¹⁹

Backing for Chinese Communist Party-Aligned Groups

In September 2025, Americans for Public Trust reported that “The [Children’s Investment Fund Foundation] has given millions to various organizations directly under the auspices of the Chinese government, including the National Renewable Energy Center, the Foreign Environmental Cooperation Centre (FECO), and Tsinghua University, which conduct energy and military research,” Hohn also donated $70 million to the Energy Foundation China, which is administered by former Chinese Communist Party officials. ¹⁹

Withdrawal From U.S.

In October 2025, Hohn declared that he would end his contributions to U.S.-based groups citing uncertainty about U.S. laws. “Unfortunately, we are no longer confident in our understanding of the US policy environment for foreign funders of US NGOs, including for international work, which is our focus,” CIFF wrote in a statement. “Consequently, CIFF’s Board have decided that, as a precautionary measure, and until applicable laws and rules, and the execution of them, are made clearer by relevant authorities, CIFF should redirect its funding to, and restructure its contracts to be with, non-US NGOs.” ²⁰

Investments

Hohn is one of the three largest investors of Aena, the majority owner of Luton airport outside London, and has built up a 4% stake in the parent company of London’s Heathrow Airport, Ferrovial. The stake in Ferrovial is worth £630 million (approximately $815 million). TCI is also the second-largest investor to Getlink, the owner of the Eurotunnel. ²¹ owned a holding in the Canadian National Railway Company, been the largest single investor in Canadian Pacific Railway, held a large stake in the United States railway company Union Pacific (worth approximately $650 million), possessed an investment in the American missile maker Raytheon, and invested in the chemicals company Univar Solutions. ⁵

In September 2025, Americans for Public Trust reported that as of “2012, nearly half of TCI’s managed funds known at the time – or nearly $4 billion – were invested in utilities, and mainly, fossil fuel producers. Also in 2020, it was revealed that TCI had in 2012 acquired a $414 million stake in Coal India, Ltd., an Indian state-controlled fossil fuel company, and as of 2014, still maintained the investment.” ¹⁹