Jonathan Wood is a British hedge fund manager and donor to the UK Conservative Party. He is the founder of the hedge fund SRM Global. He donated £500,000 to the Conservative Party in 2010.[1]
Wood was born in Yorkshire and grew up in Whitstable, Kent, the middle of three children. He studied economics at Loughborough University. He was a successful trader at UBS, reportedly earning $2.4 billion for the bank over a six-year period.[2] He was an investor in The Gadget Shop and, after the firm went into administration, he later filed a lawsuit for £100 million against former partners Tom Hunter and Chris Gorman. He alleged Gorman and Hunter had privately acquired Birthdays, ruining a potentially lucrative merger between the retailer and the Gadget Shop. The lawsuit was dismissed: Gorman and Hunter had made a loss on their acquisition and the judge described Wood as "a very hard and calculating man".[2][3] Wood founded a hedge fund in 2006 – SRM Global. As of January 2011[update], it is rumoured that a second hedge-fund company will be created, SRM II.[4]