Sir Chris Hohn Transcript from Money Maze Podcast (November 2025)

Hohn & Simon Brewer 1v1

Please find below a slightly edited transcript of a recent discussion between Chris Hohn from TCI Fund Management and Simon Brewer from the Money Maze Podcast. This interview was posted on youtube on November 13th 2025. I have made minor edits to improve readability. Any inaccuracies or errors are my responsibility.

SPEAKERS

Chris Hohn, Simon Brewer

Simon Brewer: I’m particularly delighted to release today’s episode. In October, we held the inaugural money maze allocators Summit, and over the two days, there was fantastic discussion, debate, insights, disagreement and a lot of learning. But of all the conversations, one that particularly resonated with me was the chance to interview Sir Chris Hohn about those two topics with which he is fantastically acquainted, investing and philanthropy. And I think, as you will discover in a minute, that he perhaps stands above most mortals with the clarity of his thinking and the extraordinary generosity and effectiveness in both disciplines. Thank you. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Sir Chris twice before, and we are really, really appreciative of you being here today. Thank you so much. I think your investment success is probably only matched by your philanthropic generosity, and we’re going to talk about both of those today, investing and philanthropy. And I’m conscious a little bit like an earlier panel before Bernie, I would, I’d really like a couple of hours, but unfortunately, that isn’t possible. So will you come back next year? Chris, what’s made you successful?

Chris Hohn: Well, thanks for inviting me. Simon. Well, investing is all about risk and return, and vast majority of investors focus on return. That’s what you see in any asset allocator, what’s your return, that’s the only thing. But I focused actually, in my career in risk, firstly, return does matter, but to me, risk was always the first thing that mattered. And lot of people have their own definitions of risk. I love George Soros definition, which was not knowing what you’re doing. So what does that mean? You know, for me, that’s understanding what matters in investing. And it was a spiritual master once he said, very few things matter, and most things don’t matter at all. And that could also apply to investing. So what does matter? Competition matters because too much competition erodes your profits, and maybe we don’t make any money at all. So I hate competition and makes predictability and valuation impossible, and and the interesting thing, so to me, a sense, competition and disruption are the whole thing. It’s not about growth, because you can have a first move advantage growth for a period, and then a new technology or a new competitor kills you off. And fact of the matter is that most investors underestimate the forces of competition and disruption because they underestimate complexity. They look short term and and so we do two things really, we’re looking for such companies and with such high barriers to entry over the long term that we think we can have a reasonable idea that they’ll be around. Okay, can’t be precise about exactly what they’ll be worth, but they’ll be there in not in one, two or three years, which is a normal time horizon of an investor, but in 20 or 30 years, which is the time horizon where the value, if you do an NPV model, really is, And so we really, we try to get focus all our time on barriers to entry and disruption and so and the second component of the philosophy, if you like, is long termism. Now that’s fundamental. You know, our average holding period of a stock in our portfolio is eight years. We’ve held stocks for 13 years and 12 and 10, but the average is eight years, which is like. Starting to get into private equity land of duration of investment, and it’s counting eight years in counting. Now you may but it’s an interesting question. A lot of people make money with high frequency trading. The shorter the trading horizon, the better. The average stock holding period is under a year of a stock in in the US. So it’s all very well to say you’re long term, but that’s only a good thing. It’s not necessarily a good thing unless it works, and it only works if you’re right on the first point about the quality of the company and the barriers to entry. But if you’re right that this company, you find a company that is going to be a good company long term, then you should hold on to it, because there’s a persistency of these barriers to entry and the things that make it good. So in simple terms, good companies stay good and bad companies stay bad. But, and I guess there’s another point, there aren’t that many great companies, the super companies of the world, and if you find them, you should hold on to them. So that’s there’s related concepts like engagement and concentration, but those are secondary to the first points.

Simon Brewer: So let me ask you about those barriers to entry, because how is your thinking in identifying them changed in the last two decades?

Chris Hohn: we’ve enlarged the universe over time of things that we have found that are more companies, more industries, as we’ve learned, like everyone we’re always learning, if you and the so I always liked hard assets, infrastructure, the what came within that, you know, could expand beyond. We’ve owned a lot of airports and toll roads. But, you know, we found toll roads in Europe, then we found toll roads in Canada and the US through Ferrovial and cell phone towers and the so railroads and so the so. But then, beyond hard assets, infrastructure, we found other barriers to entry, such as network effects, okay and certain industries, payments is one we’ve been a shareholder of visa a long time where it has this huge, ever growing network connecting every customer and every bank to the world and the as the network grows, it becomes just ever harder to replicate. Aerospace is a sector that we’ve come to learn about and understand, and where the barriers to entry are multiple. Often you would like not just one barrier to entry, but maybe five - intellectual property. You could have its brands, hard assets, contracts, network effects, with big shareholders in aircraft engines, where you have many of those IP contracts. Installed base is another barrier to entry where customers can’t switch regulatory switching costs. And so the so we’ve expanded - rating agencies is another one. So the and one of the key sort of points of, if you, if you really do, find one of these super companies that can dominate their industries, they have something special, which is pricing power, which is a rare thing, so most companies don’t like to talk about it. And, and it’s a special thing, because it means you can grow more than your volume and, and it’s got a leveraged effect, because if it’s above inflation, so pricing power means you can price above inflation, then you there’s no cost to that. And if you have a 10% margin, might give you know, a huge every one point of real pricing guys is massive. It’s super leveraged and potent and so the but I think you world is changing so much that some of these motes of apparent moats are being just beaten down by AI and other disruption forces. So the forces of disruption, I would say, are actually rising.

Simon Brewer: So that was what I wanted, again, to disruption is around us. You got access to, you know, all sorts of very clever people, great conversations. But how are you how do you think about identifying those, those underlying weaknesses that may derail the thesis?

Chris Hohn: Well, you really want something that’s obvious. Warren Buffett used to talk about this. If you can’t put it on, and when it’s not obvious, you probably just leave it alone, because it’s probably not sustainable. So it’s sustainable barriers to entry. So if we own an airport, it’s pretty obvious in, you know, we own a company that owns all the airports in Spain. Owned it for a decade. I was on the board. No one’s ever going to rebuild those and overbuild you. And 75% is unregulated. So when you look at it, the shops and you know, so the infrastructure pieces, especially being a bit unregulated. All roads where you have 100 year duration or 60 years, like for over Al, those are, you know, people. We don’t know whether people can drive electric cars, or which brand of electric car or but it’s pretty clear they’re going to need these roads and so those are obvious things. The I’d say, when you have multiple of these barriers to entry, no alternative option. So we like aircraft engines, but will it be an alternative technology? Will they become electric? The science doesn’t really permit that, and it’s too expensive to replace the existing fleet, so you’ve probably got a pretty good visibility on 25 years. And so we think technologies that change quickly aren’t good for us. Can’t predict them. So I would say some principles would be multiple barriers to entry, and that and essential. Need something that is essential, so you’ve got to be confident of the need. So we, you know, are people still going to want to fly? You know? We believe that’s a durable need, you know. So we don’t like discretionary things, you know, I’ve never been an investor in the handbag business. Lots of people have, and they’ve made lots of money in it. But I’ve never, you know, understood what makes one handbag better than another. but it’s why it’s essential. So anyway, it may well be I don’t need to understand everything. Yeah, just say, within your sphere of competence, that’s what Buffett said.

Simon Brewer: What is fabulous about the investing business is it the quantity meets the qualitative. And you’ve written a lot about engaging with management, and I wonder when you go to meet management today, you’ve done this for a long time. What are you thinking about that conversation?

Chris Hohn: people think read about us and they say, Oh, you, you’re an activist. Well, we’ve done that. It’s sort of a tool, but we prefer always have constructive, long-term relationships with management. And the we hold an investor day in New York every year for our investors, and this year we had the CEO of GE Aerospace, the CEO of Airbus came to speak to our investors on the stage at the same time. Never, never been done before, CEO of Moody’s, CEO of Vinci, top executive from Visa. So every year we have the same. Thing it and these people come because they think we can add value to them. Our Aerospace analyst was invited by GE CEO then to speak to their top 300 managers about the company. So that’s not normal. Why do they do that? Because they think we understand the company, and we can add sometimes, some value. They find it a value-added conversation. So because we do so much, so much research on a company that and we follow the industry so we want to be, want it to be a relationship, okay? And that means and it to be a conversation. Now, of course, we weren’t always like that, but we’ve evolved. And so I’d say it’s really, really is engagement. Through engagement, you can learn something if it’s a one way conversation. You’re just speaking at someone. You don’t learn anything. We have to learn.

Simon Brewer: But along your way, there will have been some investments that didn’t work as well. And I wonder, when you reflected on those, was there something in those conversations that maybe you weren’t as sensitive to, that maybe you are today?

Chris Hohn: Ultimately, the quality of the business trumps everything. And so the I’d say does management manner, somewhat it’s not the key thing. And a great manager in a bad business, they can’t really necessarily do much, and so I think focusing on trying to assess management through conversation may miss the point. Okay, so I think you may overstate the value of the management and and sometimes management won’t even necessarily understand their own pricing power and latent pricing power. Or, you know, so, but I think, I don’t think the I think it’s if I would say something on the question, you’ve got to listen and see if you can learn and be humble if you become arrogant. That’s a killer in the investing business.

Simon Brewer: I try not to say anything, given that there are stretched valuations in all sorts of parts of the world, you have been very comfortable shorting in the past. Sort of under what circumstances might you have more shorts than you’ve had of late?

Chris Hohn: You know, I’ve never really been a significant short seller. I don’t think I’ve cumulatively made absolute money in it and and I sort of agree with what Warren Buffett told me one night. I had a dinner with him, and I asked him about shorting, and he said he didn’t do it because they - he and Charlie Munger concluded it was just too hard, too unpredictable. You know, he thought long and hard about it, because in shorting, you need to also understand investor psychology. Because when the short goes against you, you have to fund the losses. People think that’s like a costless thing, but you have to sell longs to fund the losses on shorts. And you can eventually right, be right, but can you hold your position? You know, we were. We did have a short a couple of years ago in Wirecard where we thought it was a fraud, which is, we have a very high bar run, but, and actually, I propose timing, I filed a public criminal complaint against the company in the Munich prosecutor’s office, the company wasn’t too happy. The chairman used to be the CFO Deutsche Bach. He said I was a liar and but within two weeks, it was bankrupt. Now and then the media got involved, and they went to Australia to meet a guy at Bronte capital who was one of the very first short sellers of Wirecard 20 years ago. And they said, the journalist said, Congratulations. Yeah, this must be a big day for you, but the stock could have gone up 20x and he said, I had. Cover it. After a year it was I couldn’t fund the losses. Yeah, so I wasn’t here to see the day it went bankrupt. Yeah, I lost. So it’s very hard thing, and you could be squeezed. If you watch the movie Dumb Money (2023), it’s a great movie. You’ll see that the difficulties of short selling, of being short squeezed so there’s so many technical issues that you know sometimes you just have to experience tells you it’s just too unpredictable. And the you and because of the investor psychology point

Simon Brewer: it’s interesting. I see front rows Chris Dale of Kintbury Capital, who also successfully shorted wire card for a while. And well, right to the end, actually, as it happens, and I’m an investor with them, which is why I know. What are you most excited about when you think about the investing landscape?

Chris Hohn: I like things that will just compound long term. I don’t change year to year very much. So I, you know, I things that I feel confident will be around in 30 years in a dominant position excite me, because it’s just predictable. I value predictability. You know, it’s and sometimes people under you know your very question illustrates what most investors are looking for, the next hot thing. Yep, the new thing. And sometimes I’ll say, but sarcastically, will you want to investor say, what’s new? I say, do you need to change your wife every year, difficult conversation. Family always says, don’t ask that question, because people might give them ideas. yes, we you wouldn’t ask that question because you’re happy with it. Yeah, you’re happy with what you’ve got. Yeah, and so, and it’s, you know, it’s not that easy to find, you know, there’s some truth in some of these funny examples. It’s not that easy to find the right partner. It’s not that easy to find the right investment. So why do you want to change them immediately? If you find something good, it’s going to be good long term, stick with it and don’t think that newer is always better. This is what investors think. They don’t think about sustainability. They want the next hot thing. They think growth is the thing, but new is the thing, but that, you know, we want to be, because so many people think in terms of what John Keynes actually Benjamin Graham said that in the short term, the market is a voting machine. What’s hot? It’s new, but in the long term, it’s a weighing machine, yep, so covid peloton was hot, yeah, went to $50 billion valuation. Everyone was on their peloton machine. But, you know, virtually went to zero, and so, yeah, we, I think that’s the most important question. Is just we’re more interested in question what is, what’s going to be around, rather than what’s new?

Simon Brewer: Very clearly expressed. Let’s switch to philanthropy. Why?

Chris Hohn: Why? Simon, I talked before, and you had a lot of questions on how I said there’s a book. The book, title of the book is, let’s start with why. That’s a better question to start with, and it was when, when I was 20, I went to the Philippines and saw people in poverty, and I thought living on a garbage heap, and I thought, This isn’t right. If I could do something one day, that would be a good thing to do. But then, obviously, I didn’t have any resources, and found my way to a hedge fund in New York, and after some years, I had a good year, and they paid me a bonus of $10 million and i had a couple of million dollars, I don’t remember exactly, not lots of money. And I immediately gave it away to charity. I didn’t I didn’t want it. I gave up a foundation and put it into it. I didn’t, and I couldn’t tell you that, you know, the reasoning? I just thought, This isn’t really something I should have. Yeah, and then I started doing more and more and but I I didn’t understand it. For 20 years I was doing philanthropy. Sounds strange to say, i remember sitting down with Bill Gates and asking me the same question i and it was only in recent years I sort of figured it out that why, and that actually there’s something within all of us who call it consciousness. Some people call it the soul. My son tried to explain this to him, he said to me, Dad, the soul is a myth. And actually, I don’t think so, but, and it’s this that drew me. It’s the basic urge of the soul is to to do service and and so that’s was a soul driven thing, and you it’s not of the intellect itself. Call it higher mind or intuition. So that’s the answer to the question. And also, yeah, it’s a knowing, if you like. So

Simon Brewer: there’ll be people in the room, small, large, donated to charity, regularly. How do you prioritize?

Chris Hohn: Yeah, I think there’s two answers to it. One is what you know? What is it? What do you feel passionate about? And then there’s another more analytical answer, the intellectual. You know, there’s intuition and intellect, two different ways of thinking in the intellect, you I look for high leverage and fundamental things. There are things that are back to the what, what’s most important? So one of the things I’m really passionate about is contraception in poor countries. Now, in Africa, I do most of my work, the women on average, will have nearly seven children. Now, they don’t want seven children, just to be clear, if it’s it’s not their choice. They don’t own their bodies often and for various reasons, usually economic, yep, and and so. But it’s foundational, because if a woman, let’s say, wants two children, not seven children, she’s so poor she can’t feed or they will have health for those seven children, if she has the two children instead of the seven, you see, everything is much easier. It’s sort of obvious stuff. And the other thing I’d look at is where there’s it’s unfunded or underfunded, yeah, so the, you know, contraception, it’s sort of seen as a controversial thing. For some reason, in the Millennium Development Goals, nobody put a fertility target that was deemed too controversial. They conflated it with coercion, which is stupid. And so I’m also interested in. So for $10 and it can back to value for money, you can avoid an fund, an avoided unwanted pregnancy. So the value for money is incredible. Other areas that you know passionate about very molding. Climate change is foundational. It will undermine all of development as soils dry out, drought won’t be a people will have less to eat, hunger, malnutrition. It impacts the poorest. First country is already hot, getting hotter, and so climate is really also foundational and and urgent. I’m also other areas. I love neglected tropical diseases, because impact is enormous. About seven diseases impacting 2 billion people, many of which people never heard about, like trachoma and river blindness and Lymphatic filariasis and Schistosomiasis. Anyway, these things can be eliminated. The drug companies have actually funded for fee the trucks just needs someone to do, you know, mass Drug Administration, which is very cheap, and so it’s really a crime not to do this. And trachoma surgeries is people go permanently blind for $50 surgery. Yeah, isn’t that crazy, so, but I also the other big things that are I care about that are foundational as well, like child marriage, that’s a big thing.

Simon Brewer: So when you identify that theme, terrific, but you have to choose a partner. How do you think about that?

Chris Hohn: Yeah, because we, what do I have just money? Yeah, its a commodity, and so I have to work through people and the so we, I guess we have three types of partners, governments, NGOs and companies. And if you can find, if you can do this through governments, it’s perfect as it’s more sustainable, okay? And so sometimes we will do both. We’ll fund NGOs to work through governments. What’s an example messaging to women in Ethiopia and to sorry, married couples in Ethiopia through community health workers funded by government there, about The benefits of contraception is actually free. They already found the community health worker. We found that 70% of the women who were literally the couples who were messaged to about the financial cost. Would you believe of of having lots of children, started taking contraception? Contraceptives who weren’t, and sustained it. So it’s incredible program. They’ve rolled it out through the country and and so we love we can to work through governments. You know, NGOs? Why NGOs? Well, where sometimes governments don’t have the innovation, or the interest. Okay, so child marriage in India got is something where it’s not something - requires, if there’s going to be often an NGO has to. Why do you need an NGO was an interesting question. Yeah, why can’t you just tell government the idea? Well, sometimes governments don’t care. Why do we and until the NGO tried to stop child marriages, you could just end up being killed. Yeah, in some of these places, it’s not for the faint hearted, so that they care, they’re not willing to sort of put their life in danger. And so you often find NGOs care more and and so if, especially if you can pick the right leadership. And so I do a lot with grassroots NGOs, but we’re trying to prove a concept and then get governments to scale it. So we did, and companies. I give you a couple of examples. There, may somebody says market failure. So a few years ago, 10 years ago, there was a company that patented therapeutic food for severe, acute malnourished kids, company called NutraCet, which is its bogus patent, because it wasn’t novel, but they prevented other companies producing it to make money, and I funded a company to break that monopoly. And in fact, I put in the contract that they were sued to cease and desist. They had to continue. Had funded litigation, but they couldn’t stop. And companies called manly nutrition and put $200 million into it, and now they have a capacity of $500 million of this, they’ve saved over 10 million lives. Okay? And but I, but they’re a nonprofit, so they never made any money. CEO calls it an upside down company where their performance is measured in life, save not not money, but the Why would other people, they say there’s not enough money in it? Yeah? Well, there was someone trying to patent it. So there are all sorts of reasons, but the social payoff is enormous. Yeah, so sometimes there’s stuff that philanthropy can be catalytic in a way which, so we’ll use any any partner that’s intelligent, but you really want to find people who care. See, there’s a strange thing to say. But you know, my early days, I would ask, Will, can you hire mercenaries? People just care about money. And I came to realize that it doesn’t work. You need people who it’s from the heart

Simon Brewer: and so therefore performance measurement takes on a different perspective.

Chris Hohn: Yeah, now, performance is an interesting question, okay, and because, if you don’t understand the theory of change in the you could make a big mistake, and I by measuring the wrong thing. Now, especially back to the point if you don’t know what you’re doing. So here’s an example. For 10 years, I funded this company that did contraception for adolescents. Now, what’s adolescent? In some cases, they were children, and I was brought into a slum a couple of years ago to meet these girls and dice, and I knew immediately something was very wrong, because they were so depressed. And if you looked into their eyes, there was nothing behind the eyes. Psychologists would say that they were dissociated, yeah, I would say, Soul disconnected. And I asked them, Why? Why do you need the contraceptives? They wouldn’t answer the question. I said, so the KPI was, did they get the contraceptive? On paper? Was all great. They all got the contraceptives, very low cost, I said. I asked the question, well actually, when I said, Do you have boyfriends? They said, No. I said, Do you have husbands? They said, No. They were 15, 16,17, I said, Then why the hell do you need these contraceptives? And they said, because we’re being raped all the time since we’re aged eight, and then other girls told me they were having to prostitute themselves to eat. So suddenly, the performance indicator of, did they get the contraceptive, and what was the unit cost of the contraceptive was, was missing the point - these girls had to find a way out of their their situation. Yep, so you got to understand the root cause and and rather than just working on symptoms, because the KPI may not capture the quality of life - where life isn’t about just years, yeah, the you know those girls, as is the case for many women in these. Countries. They’re living in, hell and so. But if you were just looking at numbers, you don’t see it. And the only reason I saw it is through looking at them as human beings and saying something’s wrong here. So of course, we look at cost benefit and but sometimes the and another key point is we prevention versus cure. You know, if you can prevent, you know, they’re just so many no brainers, I call them. You can test someone with a saliva test or rapid blood test for HIV, and find a positive person, put them on treatment $300 done 11 million tests with the Global Fund. So simple, so you stop that person spreading it to multiple other people for $300 yeah, so the So, but you’ve got to try to get to root cause. Why you know? Why are you know? And it’s not always obvious or simple. Why are children being married off? Is it economics. Is it consciousness? It’s actually you do need to change consciousness.

Simon Brewer: Which, of course, leads to my last question. Which is you give an example, your former example? I can’t think how AI could help. The latter is that AI might help. How are you allowing it to help?

Chris Hohn: One thinks AI is the be all and end all of humanity. World, there is one problem with AI. It doesn’t have consciousness or conscience. A friend of mine told me last week that friend of hers, her daughter, was very depressed, and she was using chatGPT to talk to she’s very isolated and and without going into the detail, she ended up committing Suicide. And the AI didn’t, obviously, do anything. Yeah, so we’re as a species, we’ve confused intelligence with you know and knowledge and and consciousness in so without, we think information and intelligence is the way all and end all. But there’s something more powerful, which is love and heart and consciousness. And without that connection, and actually, people are becoming more disconnected from that, always on their phones, always thinking that chatGPT or the latest AI can give them the answer. Will the, you know, the becoming more and more in intellect. And so I think we have to actually, we’re sort of entering, you know, a more and more dangerous point for humanity, because the we sort of have lost the plot, where we think that AI will solve All humanity’s problems. You know, couldn’t be clearer that problems are getting worse. No solution for climate change, no solution for poverty, wars, you know, you name it, and inequality, divisiveness, hatred, it’s all rising. I think you know the so I think there needs to be a new paradigm in consciousness. And it’s not about AI. It’s about love, if you and in there are foundational principles that are rather disruptive, such as ownership. Do we owe? You know, this concept that we own things and that it’s as I’ve always thought, I actually don’t own anything. I’m just a custodian. Yeah? What is that? Yeah? Which is, it’s money. Mine needs to be given away and in service to humanity. And if you go out of the intellect into intuition, which is why made me give away that money. You know, when we’re on our deathbed, we, I don’t think we think we own things. Yeah. Yeah, and why would we? Because, ultimately, everything is a gift. It’s not as it’s, you know, I didn’t make all this money because I was smart or lucky. It was, you know, I think because I’m willing to give it away. And so I think, you know, the most important thing back to what matters is consciousness and love. And if we connect to that, then we’ll find purpose. And so I think, for me, in a nutshell, philanthropy has given me purpose.

Simon Brewer: What a great place to stop. So Chris, you have given so much to the world and thank you for your time today.