| David Harding | |
|---|---|
| Born | Oxford |
| Residence | London |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | St. Catherine's College, Cambridge |
| Occupation | Investment management |
| Years active | 1982 to present |
| Known for | Founder of Winton Capital Management |
| Net worth | GB£430 million (2010)[1] |
David Winton Harding is a British investment manager and philanthropist who is the founder, chairman and head of research of Winton Capital Management.[2] He is a leading manager of investment funds, having previously co-founded Man AHL (formerly Adams, Harding & Lueck).[3] Harding favours quantitative investment strategies, using scientific research as the basis of trading decisions. His philanthropic works include the establishment of a chair at the University of Cambridge and a center at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, both dedicated to the study of risk, and the foundation of a research programme into the physics of sustainability at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory.
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Harding studied natural sciences, specialising in theoretical physics, at St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge,[4] where he graduated in 1982[5] with a first class honours degree.[6][7] Later that year he began a traineeship at Wood Mackenzie, a stock broker.[8] After two years, he joined a futures brokerage, Johnson Matthey & Wallace, as a trader in commodity futures.[8][6]
In 1985, Harding became a futures trader at Sabre Fund Management, which was one of the first commodity trading advisors (CTAs) in the United Kingdom.[9] At Sabre, he drew on his scientific background to design trading programs for futures markets.[8] He remained with Sabre for two years,[7] until he met Michael Adam and Martin Lueck, with whom he founded Adam, Harding & Lueck (AHL) in 1987.[8][9][7]
Harding, Adam and Lueck created AHL as a quantitatively focused CTA, and the firm quickly became well-regarded in the investment management industry.[8] In 1989, after two years in operation, ED & F Man (which later became the Man Group) purchased a 51 percent stake in the firm.[8] When Man bought the whole firm in 1994,[6][9][4][7] Harding became head of the Man Quantitative Research division.[7] In 1996, he left the company to set up his own firm. According to Barron's, Harding had left Man after becoming frustrated by lack of focus on research and the bureaucracy of working in a large firm.[9][4]
Harding founded the investment management firm Winton Capital Management in 1997, naming it after his middle name.[7] As of 2011[update] he is the chairman and head of research at the firm, and is also the majority owner.[10][11][12] According to Hedge Fund Review magazine, Harding's aim when developing Winton was to demonstrate that a business can be successful based on empirical scientific research, rather than relying on marketing.[6] Inspired by U.S. hedge fund management company Renaissance Technologies,[8] Harding recruited scientists to the firm in order to create a strong research environment[11] and to use quantitative, statistical research of market trends to inform his trading decisions.[8]
Harding launched the Winton Futures Fund with $1.6 million in assets in 1997, and by 2009 the fund had returned on average 18 percent net per year.[9] As of June 2011[update], Harding had launched two more Winton funds and his firm held a total of $22.6 billion in assets.[13]
As the founder of Winton and co-founder of AHL—two of the largest hedge fund managers in Europe—Harding has been described by industry commentators as "one of the pioneers of the hedge fund industry".[4][3] He has been ranked among the top 50 hedge fund managers worldwide by Alpha magazine,[12] and he was listed at 158 on the Sunday Times Rich List 2010.[14]
Harding has supported a number of philanthropic causes, in particular through donations to educational and research institutions. He established the Winton Charitable Foundation, for which he is a trustee, to fund an endowed position at the University of Cambridge and to provide donations to other causes.[15] Through the Winton Foundation, Harding funded in perpetuity a new professorship at the Statistical Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, the Winton Professorship of the Public Understanding of Risk, aimed at increasing understanding of the mathematics of risk for individuals and organisations.[16][11][6] Harding is also the patron of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin,[8] which opened in 2009.[17]
In 2010, Harding pledged a donation of £20 million to the Cavendish Laboratory, the University of Cambridge's Department of Physics, to establish The Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, a research programme to apply theoretical physics to issues of the sustainability of natural resources.[18][5] The donation to the Cavendish is the largest since it was created in 1874.[18] Harding is also one of the managers of the Winton Fund for the Physics of Sustainability, which manages the programme's funding.[19] In 2011 Winton Capital management began a five-year sponsorship of the Royal Society prize for popular science books which was rechristened the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.[20]
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