Bailout

Paying for failure, TCI edition

By Felix Salmon

Tom Cahill, June 24:

Christopher Cooper-Hohn?s $9.5 billion hedge fund proposed cutting fees and easing withdrawal limits to retain clients after top executives quit and it lost 43 percent last year, according to three investors…

TCI earmarks a portion of its fees for the Children?s Investment Fund Foundation, a charity run by Cooper-Hohn?s wife, Jamie. The effective fees, split between the fund and the charity, had been 2 percent until losses in 2008, said the TCI investors.

Matthew Bishop, June 26:

As The Economist went to press the Children?s Investment Fund Foundation, a charity based in London, was due to announce that it had received a whopping £495m ($812m) in the 2008 fiscal year from TCI, a hedge fund, under covenants built into the fund when it was founded by Christopher Cooper-Hohn in 2003.

$812 million is 8.5% of $9.5 billion. Just sayin’.

Full post as published by Macroprudential on June 26, 2009 (boomark / email).