In December, billionaire hedge fund manager Chris Hohn made headlines when he sent several very public letters to companies with which he’d invested. As the head of the charitably-named The Children’s Investment (TCI) Fund (which holds more than $28 billion in assets), the people on the receiving end of those letters were big names like Google, Microsoft, and the Canadian National Railway.
In the letter, TCI proclaimed that it would begin to make financial decisions based on a company’s ability to combat climate change. Indeed, TCI has demanded that the companies with which it invests should “publicly disclose all of their emissions” and establish “a credible plan for their reduction.”
A Big Time Payday
Just two days after his big announcement, reports circulated that Hohn had gifted himself $261 million in dividend payments in spite of the fact that TCI only made $260 million (and endured a third straight year of diminished profits) in 2019.
Equal pay activist Luke Hildyard lamented the payout, saying:
“You don’t have to want to upend the entire system or have anything against Sir Chris Hohn personally to feel uncomfortable with one individual raking in £200m in a country where ordinary workers are enduring the longest period of pay stagnation since the Napoleonic wars and record numbers are resorting to food banks to feed their families.”
Behind the Center for Climate Integrity
Hohn is expected to funnel at least a portion of his year-end bonus into asserting his personal anti-energy agenda. In early January, it was reported that Hohn has moved his climate agenda to the United States. The billionaire reportedly devoted millions to sponsor US-based protest groups who are spoiling to take their fight with oil and gas companies into a courtroom.
In the past, the Center for Climate Intervention, one of the companies funded almost entirely by Chris Hohn, has fueled the fire of climate change litigation around the country. In Miami, for example, the CCI went so far as to purchase billboards meant to stir the population into pressuring civic leaders to take legal action against oil and gas companies.
The Billionaire Meddler
Hohn is expected to ramp up donations to his pocket charity over the coming year in an effort to force US oil and gas companies to bend to his will. In doing so, the foreign financial leader is actively and unrepentantly trying to impose his will on the people of another nation.