George Osborne has been hired to lead a new $3bn (£2.4bn) investment management firm, adding to a growing roster of lucrative jobs the former UK chancellor has taken up since stepping down as an MP in 2017. Osborne, who led the Treasury under David Cameron from 2010 to 2016, has been appointed chair of Lingotto Investment Management, which is owned by the billionaire Agnelli family’s Exor group. Exor manages the Italian family’s investments in an array of companies, including Juventus FC, the Economist and Ferrari, and is run by the Agnelli heir, John Elkann.
Lingotto markets itself as “an independent, entrepreneurial” firm that will allow staff to pursue their “passion for investing without the bureaucracy of most large organisations, or the loneliness of standalone funds”. It adds to a growing list of City roles held by Osborne, who is already a partner at the boutique City advisory firm Robey Warshaw. That role, which he took up in early 2021, has already proved lucrative, with the former politician having been one of four partners who shared a £26.5m payout last year. He will also remain a director for his family’s wallpaper-making business, Osborne & Little, which is controlled by his father, Sir Peter Osborne. The company disclosed last year that it had increased pay for directors, including the former chancellor, by 30% after a jump in profits that were helped by £700,000 in British and US government grants. The ex-parliamentarian will also maintain his roles as chair of the British Museum and managing partner of the venture capital firm 9yards Capital, which he founded with his younger brother, Theo. The firm has made a number of investments in startups including the US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase – which recently reached a settlement with US authorities after an investigation into compliance and money-laundering controls – and Robinhood, the trading platform that gained notoriety for allowing amateur stock investors to play the market. Osborne had an even more wide-ranging portfolio career before he agreed to give up many of those positions when joining Robey Warshaw two years ago. He said goodbye to a big annual paycheque from BlackRock, which paid him £650,000 for working one day a week as an adviser. Previous posts he had held also included his editorship of the Evening Standard – which he led between 2016 and 2019 – and his chairmanship of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership. The new role at Lingotto is new but not unexpected, with Osborne already having served as the chair of Exor’s business advisory council for the past five years. Lingotto – which is not disclosing Osborne’s salary – said the former chancellor would drop the council role to run the investment management firm, but would “use his extensive professional experience in support of the company’s development”. “I’m delighted to be joining the team here, which offers something new and unique in the investment management space,” Osborne said. “It’s been a privilege to chair the Exor partners’ council since 2018 and I now look forward to working with the Lingotto team, helping them to build a great company.” Lingotto has also hired former Baillie Gifford partner James Anderson to its investor team. It brings Anderson back into the industry a year after he stepped down from Baillie Gifford, where he was an early backer in firms including Amazon, ByteDance and Tesla, and helped deliver returns of 1,155% for his actively managed fund between 2000 and 2022.