Hugh Hendry is a Scottish fund manager at Eclectica Asset Management. He has become prominent in the United Kingdom for his commentary on the financial crisis.
Born in 1969 in Glasgow, Scotland, Hendry graduated from Strathclyde University in 1990 with a BA in economics and finance. It has been reported that he was the first non-Oxbridge graduate to get a job at the prestigious Edinburgh investment management firm, Baillie Gifford.[1] However, this is not true - the firm started to recruit from other universities in the late 1980s. A number of Baillie Gifford's current partners who joined the firm prior to Hugh are graduates of Edinburgh, Dundee and Bristol.
Hendry has been referred to as "the most high-profile Scot in the controversial (Hedge Fund) sector."[2]
Hendry has recently gained notoriety for railing against government bailouts and moral hazard in interviews and round-robin discussions. On an episode of the BBC’s Newsnight program aired on May 26, 2010, Hendry was featured along with Gillian Tett of Financial Times and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. Hendry responded to a question from host Jeremy Paxman about the current European economic situation and the possibility of a Greek sovereign debt default with the comment, "I would recommend you panic".[3]
In an episode of Question Time on September 28, 2010, Hendry proposed that Government agencies such as MI6 should torture people for intelligence information. The hedge fund manager said: "I like the notion that there are cowards out there and if they mess with us there could be very unpleasant consequences." He elaborated, "I don't want to wrap up our intelligence agents with codes with what they can and cannot do."[4]