Jonathan Ruffer | |
---|---|
Born | Jonathan Garnier Ruffer 17 August 1951 |
Education | Marlborough College Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge |
Occupation(s) | City investor, art collector |
Known for | Co-founder of Ruffer Investment Company |
Spouse | Jane Sequeira |
Children | 1 daughter |
Jonathan Ruffer DL (born 17 August 1951) is a British City investor, art collector and philanthropist.
Jonathan Ruffer was born on 17 August 1951 in London, England, to Major John Edward Maurice Ruffer (1912-2010) and Dorothy ("Dodo") Margaret Willan (1919-1998). Ruffer lived from an early age in Stokesley, North Yorkshire, England. [1] [2] [3] He was educated at Aysgarth School and Marlborough College, a public school in Marlborough, Wiltshire. [4] [1] He graduated from Sidney Sussex College, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, in 1972. [1] [5]
Ruffer started as a stockbroker, before becoming a barrister. [6] He is now a Bencher of the Middle Temple. He worked in corporate finance for Schroders, an accepting house bank. [5] [7] He worked for Dunbar, a private bank, [8] from 1980 to 1985. [1] He was also on the board of directors of one of its subsidiaries, Dunbar Fund Management, from 1981 to 1985. [8] He was then on the board of CFS (renamed Rathbone plc) from 1985 to 1994. [1] He was on the board of Odey Asset Management, founded by Crispin Odey, from 1992 to 2005; Fuel Tech from 1994 to 1998; and Electric & General Investment Trust from 2001 to 2011. [1]
In 1994, he co-founded Ruffer Investment Management Limited, an investment management firm with Robert Shirley, 14th Earl Ferrers (then Viscount Tamworth) and Jane Tufnell. [2] [9] The firm was renamed Ruffer LLP in 2004 and is now based at 80 Victoria Street in London. [2] [10] Ruffer was its chief executive officer from 1994 to 2012 [1] and has been its chairman since 2011. [1] The firm managed £15.4 billion on behalf of its clients in 2012–2013. [8] In 2014, it had 199 employees, [2] and additional offices in Edinburgh and Hong Kong. [11]
He is a research fellow at St John's College, Durham. [5] He has published articles in The Spectator . [12]
Ruffer credits William Rathbone VI as a source of inspiration for his philanthropy. [13] He believes nobody needs more than £20 million. [13] However, he is critical of William Temple's Christian socialism. [13]
He served as the chairman of the Good Shepherd Mission in Bethnal Green from 1998 to 2008. [1] He has also supported the Church Urban Fund. [14]
He expressed an interest in reviving County Durham through philanthropy in 2012. [3] That same year, he donated £1 million to the Durham Foundation. [15] A year later, in 2013, he donated £15 million to preserve Auckland Castle, the historical palace of the Bishop of Durham, through the Auckland Castle Trust, [13] [16] of which he is the chair. [17] [18] This included the preservation of 12 paintings by Francisco de Zurbarán, present in the palace since 1756. [13] [18] [19] In 2013, he donated £18 million to restore the Bishop's Palace and create a museum on the history of Christianity and faith in Britain, which had been expected to open in 2018. [13] [16]
The restoration project was completed in 2019 and the Castle was scheduled to re-open to visitors in November; [20] [21] three new restaurants for visitors were added, with one in operation by early November 2019. [22] [23] Nonetheless, the Scotland Wing still houses the offices of the Bishop of Durham. [24] In 2019, he worked with Sotheby's James Macdonald (an expert on the Spanish school) to assemble a collection displayed at the Spanish Gallery. [25]
In 2014, Ruffer donated the endowment to create Kynren, a night show telling the history of England, in nearby Bishop Auckland to aid in wider regeneration. [26]
He has endowed the Jonathan Ruffer curatorial grants at The Art Fund, which give £75,000 to curators every year. [27]
Ruffer collects Spanish old masters, which can be viewed in the Spanish Gallery in Bishop Auckland which opened in 2021. The Gallery contains works by El Greco, Murillo, and Juan Bautista Maíno, among others. [13] He also owns paintings by Thomas Gainsborough. [28]
Ruffer is married to Jane Sequeira, a doctor, and palliative care specialist. [5] [29] They have a daughter. [5] While he is a great-grandson of Maurice Ruffer (1857-1935), a French-born British banker, she is a descendant of Isaac Henrique Sequeira (1738-1816), a Portuguese Jewish doctor, who was painted by Thomas Gainsborough, one of his patients, and that oil painting now hangs in Madrid's Museo del Prado. [30] [31]
An Anglican, [16] he has been described by the Financial Times as "a committed evangelical Christian" [13] and The Yorkshire Post as "a devout Christian." [2] He is a member of the Athenaeum Club and the Beefsteak Club. [1]
As of 2014, he had an estimated wealth of £380 million. [13] As of 2020, Ruffer was worth £159 million according to the Sunday Times Rich List . [32]
Ruffer gave an estimated £160 million to the development of Bishop Auckland Town in 2020. In total he has given one third of his wealth to the development of the Town.
Ruffer purchased Auckland Castle to save the collection of paintings by Zuburan, that were going to be sold.
Ruffer has since opened: the Mining Art Gallery (to showcase local miners' work), the Northern Museum of Archaeological Importance, the Spanish Gallery, the Auckland Tower, the Auckland Project, the Auckland Castle, Kynren, the Deer Park, Eleven Arches, and most recently Weardale Railway which will provide a direct link from Killhope Lead Mining Museum to Bishop Auckland.[ citation needed ]
Barnard Castle is a market town on the north bank of the River Tees, in County Durham, England. The town is named after and built around a medieval castle ruin. The town's Bowes Museum's has an 18th-century Silver Swan automaton exhibit and paintings by Goya and El Greco.
The University of Auckland (UoA) is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. It is the largest, most comprehensive and highest-ranked university in New Zealand and consistently places among the top 100 universities in the QS World University Rankings. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Originally it was housed in a disused courthouse. Today, the University of Auckland is New Zealand's largest university by enrolment, hosting about 40,000 students on five Auckland campuses. The City Campus, in the Auckland CBD, has the bulk of the students and faculties. There are eight faculties, including a law school, as well as three associated research institutes.
Bishop Auckland is a market town and civil parish at the confluence of the River Wear and the River Gaunless in County Durham, England. It is 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Darlington and 12 miles (19 km) southwest of Durham.
County Durham, officially simply Durham (/ˈdʌrəm/), is a ceremonial county in North East England. The county borders Northumberland and Tyne and Wear to the north, the North Sea to the east, North Yorkshire to the south, and Cumbria to the west. The largest settlement is Darlington, and the county town is the city of Durham.
Francisco de Zurbarán was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nickname "Spanish Caravaggio", owing to the forceful use of chiaroscuro in which he excelled.
Durham Castle is a Norman castle in the city of Durham, England, which has been occupied since 1837 by University College, Durham after its previous role as the residence of the Bishops of Durham. Designated since 1986 as a cultural World Heritage Site in England, along with Durham Cathedral, the facility is open to the general public to visit, but only through guided tours, since it is in use as a working building and is home to over 100 students. The castle stands on top of a hill above the River Wear on Durham's peninsula, opposite Durham Cathedral.
The Weardale Railway is an independently-owned British single-track branch line heritage railway between Bishop Auckland, Witton-le-Wear, Wolsingham, Frosterley and Stanhope. Weardale Railway began services on 23 May 2010, but decided to run special trains rather than a scheduled service for the 2013 season. The line was purchased by the Auckland Project in 2020 with a view to restarting passenger services. In 2021, a bid was submitted to the Restoring Your Railways fund. In October 2021, the Department for Transport allocated funding for the development of a business case.
Auckland Castle, which is also known as Auckland Palace and to people that live locally as the Bishop's Castle or Bishop's Palace, is located in the town of Bishop Auckland in County Durham, England. In 1832, this castle replaced Durham Castle as the official residence of the Bishops of Durham. It is now a tourist attraction, but still houses the Bishop's offices; the Castle is a Grade I listed building.
Bishop Auckland is a constituency in County Durham represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Dehenna Davison, a Conservative.
Helen Catherine Goodman is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland from 2005 to 2019. A member of the Labour Party, she was Deputy Leader of the House of Commons from 2007 to 2008 and a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2009 to 2010. She also served in government as an Assistant Whip from 2008 to 2009.
Kenneth Cordele Griffin is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder, chief executive officer, co-chief investment officer, and 80% owner of Citadel LLC, a multinational hedge fund. He also owns Citadel Securities, one of the largest market makers in the U.S.
Bishop Auckland is a railway station that serves the market town of Bishop Auckland in County Durham, North East England, 11 miles 77 chains (19.3 km) north-west of Darlington. The station is the Western terminus of the Tees Valley Line, which links it to Saltburn via Darlington. It is owned by Network Rail and managed by Northern Trains.
Richard Trevor was an English prelate of Welsh descent, who served as bishop of St Davids from 1744 to 1752 and bishop of Durham from 1752 until his death.
Robin Crispin William Odey is a British hedge fund manager and founder of Odey Asset Management. According to Bloomberg in November 2017, he is "known for his bearish outlook" on the markets.
William Hunt "Bill" Gross is an American investor and fund manager, best known for co-founding Pacific Investment Management Co. PIMCO is a global fixed income investment company. Gross ran their $270 billion Total Return Fund (PTTRX), before leaving to join Janus Capital Group in September 2014.
Arthur Pond was an English painter and engraver.
Jacob and his twelve sons is a series of thirteen paintings by Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán.
Isaac Henrique Sequeira (1738-1816) was a Portuguese Sephardic Jewish doctor.
Kynren - "an epic tale of England" is a live outdoor show, which takes place in the 11Arches Park on Flatts Farm in Bishop Auckland. The 90-minute performance depicts vital moments in British history and myth spanning 2000 years. This includes the Roman conquest of Britain, King Arthur's search for the Holy Grail, and Winston Churchill's "This was their finest hour" speech during WW2, and many more.
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