Paul Marshall (investor)

Sir Paul Roderick Clucas Marshall (born 2 August 1959) is a British hedge fund manager, philanthropist, and media baron. He is the owner of ''UnHerd'', ''The Spectator'' and co-owner of GB News. According to the '' Sunday Times Rich List'', he had an estimated net worth of £875 million in 2024, up from £630 million in 2020. In 2024, he topped ''The Sunday Times Giving List'', having donated £145.1 million over 12 months to various charities, including a £50 million donation to the London School of Economics for the eponymous Marshall Institute.

Marshall was a member and donor of the Liberal Democrats, and in 2004 co-edited the influential ''Orange Book'' alongside a number of prominent Liberal Democrat politicians. In 2015 he left the party due to his support for Brexit, and subsequently donated to the Brexit campaign and the Conservative Party. His ownership of ''UnHerd'' and GB News led the ''New Statesman'' to name him as the seventeenth most powerful right-wing political figure in the UK in 2023. The ''Financial Times'' described him as "an enthusiastic combatant in the UK's own version of America's culture wars".

He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours "for services to Education and Philanthropy".

Early life and education

Paul Roderick Clucas Marshall was born on 2 August 1959 in Ealing, London, England, the son of Alan Marshall, managing director of the Philippine Refining Company (later Unilever Philippines), and Mary Sylvia Clucas. His sister is the journalist Penny Marshall.

When his parents moved to the Philippines and then South Africa for his father's job with Unilever, Marshall boarded at Merchant Taylors' School, in Northwood, London. He boarded in the Manor of the Rose while at the school.

From there he went to St John's College, Oxford, to read History and Modern Languages, and subsequently took an MBA from INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France.

Career

Marshall co-founded Marshall Wace LLP, now one of Europe's largest hedge fund groups, in 1997 together with financier Ian Wace, and serves as chairman of the company. At the time of its founding, Marshall Wace was one of the first hedge funds in London. The company started with $50 million, half of which was from George Soros.

Funds managed by Marshall Wace have won multiple investment awards and the company has become one of the world's leading managers of equity long/short strategies. Marshall Wace manages over $50 billion and has offices globally. Prior to founding Marshall Wace, Marshall worked for Mercury Asset Management, the fund management arm of S. G. Warburg & Co.

Marshall was lead non-executive director at the Department for Education with responsibility for the Union from 2013 to 2016.

He is a member of the Hedge Fund Standards Board.

In 2017, he told the ''Financial Times'' in an interview that he had no intention of retiring.

Politics

Liberal Democrats

Marshall had a longstanding involvement with Britain's Liberal Democrats party. He was a research assistant to Charles Kennedy, former leader of the Liberal Democrats in 1985 and stood for Parliament for the SDP–Liberal Alliance in Fulham in 1987. He has made appearances on current affairs programmes such as BBC Radio 4's ''Any Questions?''.

In 2004, Marshall co-edited '' The Orange Book'' with David Laws. Chapters were written by various upcoming Liberal Democrat politicians including Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, Vince Cable, Ed Davey and Susan Kramer (neither Clegg, Huhne nor Kramer were MPs at the time). Laws, describing the pair's ambition in publishing ''The Orange Book'', wrote "We were proud of the liberal philosophical heritage of our party. But we both felt that this philosophical grounding was in danger of being neglected in favour of no more than 'a philosophy of good intentions, bobbing about unanchored in the muddled middle of British politics'" The book attracted initial controversy when launched, but both it and the term Orange Bookers to describe those sympathetic to its outlook continue to be frequently referenced to describe a strand of thought within the Liberal Democrats.

Between 2002 and 2015, Marshall donated £200,000 to the Liberal Democrats. He left the party in 2015 over its policies on the European Union and its support of continuing British membership.

Brexit and the Conservative party

Marshall was a public supporter of Brexit during the European Union membership referendum in 2016. He gave a donation of £100,000 to the Leave campaign.

Writing for BrexitCentral in April 2017 on the UK exiting the European Union, Marshall wrote: "This is a huge opportunity for the UK. Our ambition is that the UK should be a champion of free trade, open and outward looking to the world and built on strong institutions." In an interview with the ''Financial Times'', he said: "Most people in Britain do not want to become part of a very large country called Europe. They want to be part of a country called Britain."

Marshall donated £3,250 to Michael Gove's Conservative Party leadership campaign in July 2016, and in 2019 gave £500,000 to the Conservative Party.

Right-leaning media ownership

In 2017, Marshall gave funding to the political news website ''UnHerd.''

In 2020–2021, Marshall invested £10 million into the political news and opinion channel GB News. Following the resignation of Andrew Neil in September 2021, Marshall temporarily replaced him as chairman, before being succeeded by Alan McCormick in April 2022. In 2022–23, he invested a further £41 million to stem the company's £42 million loss in that year.

Working with Jordan Peterson and Baroness Stroud, Marshall helped create the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, giving a keynote address at its first conference in October–November 2023.

In September 2024, he became the proprietor of ''The Spectator'' magazine, spending £100 million on the purchase.

Engagement with far-right Twitter content

In February 2024 the advocacy group Hope not Hate called attention to Marshall's activity on his private Twitter account, which had almost 5,000 followers, including MPs and journalists. He had liked tweets from far right and conspiracy accounts which contained climate denialism, which called for "mass expulsions" of immigrants, and which predicted civil war "once the Muslims get to 15–20%". Other tweets referred to Muslim immigration as "infiltration" that would lead to "the establishment of a totalitarian Islamic theocracy", and advocated believing in God because "the other side" is "committed to worshipping Satan, evil, homosexuality and corrupting children". One of his own tweets, referring to an interfaith ceremony conducted in a French church, said that the Christian church "has its useful idiots".

Alan Rusbridger, former editor of ''The Guardian'', said these "hateful 'likes' make him unfit to be a media mogul". Ark Schools defended him in a statement after he was criticised by local Labour MP Sam Tarry, though he later resigned as chair and trustee of Ark. A spokesperson for Marshall responded that "This sample f tweetsdoes not represent his views". Every tweet and almost 300 likes were subsequently removed from his Twitter account. '' Premier Christianity'' magazine quoted a friend who said that Marshall is "very repentant".

Philanthropy

According to the ''Sunday Times Giving List'' in 2020, Marshall donated £106.8 million to charitable causes in 2019. In the 2023 iteration of the ''Sunday Times Giving List'', Marshall was listed as the fourth-highest donor, donating 8.36% of his wealth.

Education

Marshall was the founder, and chairs the board of trustees of the independent research institute the Education Policy Institute (EPI). For more than a decade he also chaired EPI's predecessor think tank, CentreForum.

He is a founding trustee of children's charity ARK, and former chairman of Ark Schools, which is one of Britain's leading providers of academies and has also played a role in developing new programmes for inner city education. Other initiatives spun out of ARK include Future Leaders, Teaching Leaders, Maths Mastery, English Mastery, Science Mastery, Frontline and Now Teach. He is also a founding trustee of the charity Every Child a Chance.

In April 2024, he stood down as chair and trustee of Ark Schools to focus on "other philanthropic and business commitments" after being accused of liking and sharing far-right extremist social media posts and conspiracy theories. However, Ark Schools said he had "indicated earlier in the year his intention to step down from the Ark Schools Board". He has remained a trustee of ARK.

Marshall has also been a major supporter of Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, which launched in 2022.

The Marshall Institute

In April 2015, it was announced that Marshall would donate £30 million to the London School of Economics to establish the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship, alongside Sir Thomas Hughes-Hallett. Marshall and Hughes-Hallett had previously collaborated on the Philanthropy Review, where they identified a lack of comprehensive research into the efficacy of private contributions to public welfare. Their vision was to create a "world-class centre of teaching" to fill that gap by advancing research into enhancing philanthropic impact, studying how charities can be more effective, and nurturing the next generation of philanthropic experts.

In 2017, the Marshall Institute launched an MSc in Social Business and Entrepreneurship.

In 2021, Marshall donated an additional £50 million to the Marshall Institute to establish the Marshall Impact Accelerator to "provide a new platform for scaling promising social ventures to help tackle global challenges."

Publications

Marshall has written widely about education. In 2012, he edited a book on improving the education system called ''The Tail: how England's schools fail one child in five – and what can be done''. Contributors included Labour MP Frank Field, Professor Chris Husbands of the Institute of Education and Stephen Machin of the London School of Economics. He is also co-author of ''Aiming Higher: a better future for England's schools'' with Jennifer Moses (2006), and author of ''Tackling Educational Inequality'' (with Sumi Rabindrakumar and Lucy Wilkins, 2007).Tackling educational inequality
CentreForum.org. Retrieved on 28 April 2012.

Marshall's other publications include: ''The Market Failures Review'' (Editor – 1999), ''Britain After Blair'' (co-editor with Julian Astle, David Laws, Alasdair Murray) and ''Football and the Big Society'' (with Sam Tomlin, 2011).

In 2020 he published ''10½ Lessons from Experience: Perspectives on Fund Management'', a personal reflection on lessons learned from a career in fund management. ''The Times'' described the book as "a bit of a gem" and a Bloomberg review welcomed its examination of cognitive bias, the use of data and systematic strategies by successful fund managers. Marshall wrote, "Machines have not won yet. Machines typically do not fare well in a crisis. They are not good at responding to a new paradigm until the rules of the new paradigm are plugged into them by a human."

Personal life

Marshall is married to Sabina de Balkany, a French national, who owns an antique shop on the King's Road in Chelsea. Marshall is father of former Mumford & Sons band member Winston Marshall and musician Giovanna Marshall.

He describes himself as a "committed Church of England Christian". The ''Church Times'' describes him as "a key figure in Conservative Christian circles in the UK". He was a founding member and donor of the St Mellitus College, and sits on the board of St Paul's Theological Centre. Through the Sequioa Trust, Marshall has given at least £10 million to the Church Revitalisation Trust. A source inside the CRT described it as "promoting an evangelical agenda to the masses", and as an "antidote" to the "liberal wokery" of the Church of England.

He describes himself as a classical liberal. The ''Financial Times'' described his ownership of GB News and creation of the ARC Conference as a turn towards right-wing politics, and said that Marshall's politics had been "called into question" by his liking and retweeting of far-right content on Twitter.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Marshall, Paul
1959 births
Living people
Paul Marshall
People educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood
Alumni of St John's College, Oxford
INSEAD alumni
British company founders
British Eurosceptics
British hedge fund managers
British philanthropists
Businesspeople from the London Borough of Ealing
Knights Bachelor
Liberal Democrats (UK) people
Conservative Party (UK) donors
People from Ealing