| John W. Henry | |
|---|---|
| Owner of the Boston Red Sox | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office February 2002 |
|
| Preceded by | John Harrington |
| Owner of Liverpool Football Club | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office October 15, 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | Tom Hicks & George N. Gillett, Jr. |
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 13, 1949 Quincy, Illinois |
| Alma mater | Victor Valley High School Victor Valley College University of California |
| Profession | Businessman |
John William Henry II (born September 13, 1949) is a futures and foreign exchange trading advisor who founded John W. Henry & Company (JWH). He is the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool F.C., and co-owner of Roush Fenway Racing. In March 2006, Boston Magazine estimated his net worth at $1.1 billion, but noted that his company had recently experienced difficulties.[1] In May 2007, reports in the Wall Street Journal[2] and Bloomberg noted further difficulties with the firm.
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John William Henry II was born on September 13, 1949 in Quincy, Illinois. His parents were farmers, and he split his time growing up between Illinois and Arkansas. His asthmatic condition at the age of 15 prompted his family to move to Apple Valley, California. After his graduation from Victor Valley High School in Victorville, he attended Victor Valley College, then the University of California (at Riverside, Irvine, and Los Angeles), where he majored in philosophy but did not graduate — partly the result of performing on the road in two rock and roll bands, Elysian Fields and Hillary.
Henry started trading corn and soybean futures, to learn the basics of hedging the price risk of holding an inventory of these commodities, whether in storage or out in the field. In 1976, a commodities broker at Reynolds Securities asked him to advise other farmers, but he declined. After spending a summer in Norway with his first wife, Mai, Henry developed a mechanical trend following method for managing a futures trading account. He tested his trend-reversal method—which was never out of the market but always held a position (either long or short) in every one of the markets in the account's "basket" of commodities—"using his own money" (in the words of his marketing literature of 1983). When that test proved successful, he founded JWH in 1981, opened a small office across the street from the airport in Irvine, California, and began marketing his management to the largest commodity brokerage firms in America. That proved so successful by 1983, that he moved to considerably larger quarters at Fashion Island in Newport Beach. In 1989, JWH moved to Westport, Connecticut and Henry moved to Boca Raton, Florida. Two years later, JWH established a second office in Boca Raton.
JWH was established in 1981, and began taking retail clients in 1982.
The firm's management methods make mechanical, non-discretionary trading decisions in response to systematic determinations of reversals in each market's direction, with the explicit intention of precluding not only human emotion, but also any subjective evaluation of such things as the so-called fundamentals, to trigger each decision to be long or short each market, or not.[3]
John W. Henry grew up a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, especially their star Stan Musial. After acquiring his fortune, his first foray into professional sports was in purchasing a AAA minor league team – the Tucson Toros of the Pacific Coast League in 1989. He was also one of the founders of the Senior Professional Baseball Association (a winter league in Florida composed of retired Major League players). Henry co-owned the winning team in 1989–1990 – the West Palm Beach Tropics managed by former Boston Red Sox Impossible Dream (1967) manager, Dick Williams. He sold his interest in 1990 and the league went out of business the following year. In 1990, Henry negotiated to purchase the Orlando Magic NBA team, for a short time was the lead general for an expansion team which became the Colorado Rockies, headed a group attempting to land an NHL expansion bid for South Florida which ended up going to Tampa Bay, pre-dating South Florida's more successful NHL expansion bid soon after by Wayne Huizenga. Subsequently, Henry negotiated to buy the Miami Heat and later the New Jersey Nets.
Henry entered Major League Baseball with his purchase of a small interest in the New York Yankees in 1991. Henry became the sole owner of the Florida Marlins in 1999, purchasing the Major League club from Huizenga for a reported $158,000,000. In January 2002 Henry sold the Marlins in a multi-franchise deal to Jeffrey Loria then owner of the Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals). Simultaneously, Henry led a purchase of the Boston Red Sox with partners Tom Werner and the New York Times Company from the Yawkey Trust headed by John Harrington. Henry, as principal owner and, Werner, as chairman, assembled a front office team headed up by Larry Lucchino with the express goal of "breaking the Curse of the Bambino." He accomplished this feat in the 2004 World Series, against his former childhood favorite Cardinals, and again in 2007, against a franchise with which he had pre-expansion involvement, the Rockies. He is also responsible for saving Fenway Park from the wrecking ball. The previous Red Sox owners had planned on building a new Fenway Park next door, but Henry chose to keep and renovate (including new seats over the Green Monster) the current Fenway Park. It is scheduled to celebrate its centennial in 2012.
Henry and Werner established New England Sports Ventures in 2002. The company owns the Boston Red Sox, 80% of the New England Sports Network (which also carries the NHL's Boston Bruins), Fenway Park, Fenway Sports Group – a sports marketing and management firm, and various real estate properties surrounding Fenway Park.
In 2009, the company made its first foray into European sports with an unsuccessful bid for the French Ligue 1 club Olympique de Marseille.[4]
In October 2010 the Fenway Sports Group took over Liverpool F.C.. As of May 2011. Tom Hicks and George N. Gillett, Jr. announced that they would sue for at least $1.6 billion for the "epic swindle" they suffered.[5]
In 2007, Henry's Fenway Sports Group bought a 50% stake in the Jack Roush's Roush Fenway Racing stock car racing team.[6] Driver Matt Kenseth won the Auto Club 500 at the California Speedway in February 2007 marking Henry's first win as an owner. In February 2009 the team won their first Daytona 500 with Matt Kenseth.
In September 2004 Henry and David Kaemmer founded iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations for developing a racing simulation service aimed at both real-world racers and racing simulator enthusiasts. The service was launched in August 2008.