Hedge fund manager Paul Marshall has long been a force in the U.K.’s giving community; now he’s seeking to have an even greater impact on the development of philanthropy and innovation. This spring the London School of Economics announced a £30 million ($46 million) grant from Marshall to create the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship. The institute is also backed by Sir Thomas Hughes-Hallett, a fellow philanthropist, onetime barrister and former chair of Robert Fleming Securities, who will serve as its chair.
The institute is searching for its first director. According to the job posting, the new school will “bring together the best of the world’s thinking to increase the global impact and effectiveness of private contributions to the public good, and equip the foremost figures in the field, and the leaders of the future, with the knowledge they need to put philanthropic funding and social endeavour to best use.”
The center is getting up and running at the same time that Marshall has experienced his own windfall. In late August, $22 billion, London-based Marshall Wace, the hedge fund firm that Marshall, 56, founded in 1997 with business partner Ian Wace, announced that it has received a 24.9 percent equity investment from U.S. private equity and alternative-investment manager KKR & Co. The New York–based firm has the option to boost its stake to 39.9 percent over time. The price wasn’t disclosed, but the deal leaves Marshall, who has said that his philanthropy stems from his Christian beliefs, with even more that he can put toward good causes.
One cause that hasn’t seen much of Marshall’s cash of late is the U.K.’s Liberal Democratic party. The hedge fund manager has been one of the most prominent backers of the Lib Dems, which for almost 30 years was Britain’s third political party, behind leftist Labour and the right-wing Conservative Party. After gaining power as part of a coalition government in 2010, however, the party was decimated in this year’s election, returning with only eight members of Parliament, down from 58.
These days Marshall isn’t the only high-profile figure in his family. His son, Winston, is banjoist for the Grammy Award–winning folk rock band Mumford & Sons, beloved of bearded hipsters from New York’s Brooklyn to London’s Shoreditch and everywhere in-between.
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