There is nothing more unsettling than the nauseating family letter which falls out of the Christmas card from the old, but seldom-seen friend. There’s the trumpet-blowing about little Timmie’s latest great works; the blow by blow account of the family’s tour of evangelical Lutheran churches in Saxony this summer; and the tight-lipped acknowledgement that father dearest is now living with a 20-year-old in a bedsit in Peckham.
Not so for friends and associates of TCI’s Chris Hohn. His family’s New Year’s card message in 2006 reported his “exceptionally exciting year overthrowing German CEOs.”
So the Wall Street Journal reports in a profile of Hohn, and a look at hedge fund activism generally. It adds that the 40-year-old son of a white Jamaican (who emigrated to Britain in 1960) is one of the most feared of this breed.
A BlackBerry devotee, he reads and sends email messages to executives late into the night and into the next morning. Executives whose companies he has targeted talk of his calling them at all hours. In meetings, Mr Hohn sometimes asks the same question repeatedly, people who have been present say.
The fuller version of New Year message from family Hohn, says the WSJ, ran:
“Chris has had an exceptionally exciting year overthrowing German CEOs and expanding his investment conquests to China and Brazil,” the Hohns wrote. The holiday greeting noted that “Chris and his team’s investment performance” was “50% this past year and over 100% return over the last two years.”
So there’s even a little bit of marketing in the mix. But what we wonder will the message read after TCI’s campaign against ABN, kicked off in this letter in February, comes to fruition?
