Sir Chris Hohn is betting pretty much everything he has on three core areas – aerospace, luxury wellness and financial information. And getting out of ai. Mainly getting out of Microsoft.
Chris believes in businesses with a moat. Businesses which are hard to replicate. So his biggest current bets are companies like GE Aerospace in aviation, Visa in fintech and Moody’s & Standard and Poor in credit rating / financial services.
He spreads his tentacles via the CIFF Foundation which was the primary supporter of activist Kailash Satyarthis work opposing child labour. Whilst the intent of both may have been good, the end result was disastrous at least in the Bhadohi Mirzapur belt where the Indian Institute of Carpet Technology is located. Their crusade against child labour eradicated carpet weaving skills as kids were banned from working on carpet weaving. The end result was that weaving skills died, the carpet industry died and now there is no employment for these forcibly educated skills. The government now says that these unemployed kids should be taught carpet weaving to generate livelihoods. But isn’t exactly this that the kids were doing in the first place.
Kailash Satyarthi got a Nobel and Chris became Lord Chris Hohn. And India ruined its potent export earner.
The point I am making is that Chris can sell ice to an Eskimo and convince them that living on ice is not good for them. Then relocate them to a hot place and sell them ice and air conditioners to recreate igloos. In short, I am saying the man is a scam.
And that is the perfect qualification to run a hedge fund. And he is expectedly the most successful hedge fund manager in the world. Anyone rich is considered to talk sense for one. And this one can talk well.
The man who generated nearly $19 billion in gains last year is rewiring believing that AI destroys weak moats faster than investors expect.
Growth is not the goal. Barriers to entry are. That is why Hohn believes there are barely 200 truly high-quality companies on earth, and why his fund owns only around 15 of them.
His real test for investing:
Can the company consistently price above inflation?
A company with stable margins that prices even 1% above inflation compounds profits dramatically faster than revenue over decades. Very few businesses can do this.
After holding Microsoft since 2017 through a 400% rally, Hohn reportedly cut the position from 10% of the fund to just 1%.
Not because Microsoft is weak.
Because AI may weaken their moat. He redeployed capital into Alphabet instead.
When asked what advice he would give young people, he said:
“Go on a spiritual path.”
After decades of compounding capital, he concluded that meaning and purpose matter more than money. With a wellness manager for a partner and a global ambition in luxury wellness, he seems to be asking a deeper question:
Which companies still have moats when intelligence itself becomes abundant?
He thinks wellness.
I think military.