Real Estate

Ken Griffin: from near wipeout to record $238m homeowner


During the 2008 financial crisis, the television network CNBC parked a van outside the Chicago headquarters of Ken Griffin’s hedge fund Citadel, expecting the company to fail. The producers’ precaution was understandable. Citadel was losing “hundreds of millions of dollars” each week, Mr Griffin later told the Financial Times.

More than a decade on and Citadel has rebounded, becoming a $28bn behemoth. Sitting alongside a market-making entity called Citadel Securities, which helps other investors buy and sell assets, it has grown to be responsible for roughly a fifth of all stock trades in the US. In turn, the 50-year-old Mr Griffin — the majority owner in both ventures — has amassed a personal fortune close to $10bn, according to Forbes.

That fortune was on display as Mr Griffin agreed the purchase of a $238m New York penthouse spanning 24,000 sq ft across the top four floors of a new skyscraper being built on 220 Central Park South, which has stunning views across the leafy part of Manhattan. It marks the most expensive home purchase ever in America.

It came the same week as the FT revealed Mr Griffin had bought a £95m home near Buckingham Palace in London. His previous property purchases include one floor of the Waldorf Astoria in Chicago and he separately set the record for the most expensive home in the city when he bought a $59m four-level penthouse. He has also spent roughly $200m on land and property in Florida, where he was born. 

As an undergraduate, Mr Griffin had more humble digs. It was from his Harvard dorm room that he developed a passion for trading, installing a satellite dish to receive up-to-the-second price information. “That was 1987,” he said at a conference in November last year. “I have to explain to my son that the internet didn’t exist back then.”

He said he built basic predictive analytics tools using economic theory pulled straight out of his textbooks. That process, of marrying together mathematics and technology to trade, has been integral to both Citadel — launched in 1990, shortly after he graduated — and Citadel Securities, which together have been at the forefront of overhauling the way markets operate.

Mr Griffin’s record-breaking home is a 24,000 sq ft New York penthouse spread across four floors of a new skyscraper overlooking Central Park © Bloomberg

Mr Griffin first went into contract on his latest New York purchase in 2015, shortly before finalising a heated divorce with his second wife Anne Dias, founder of the hedge fund Aragon Global Management.

The public scrutiny of their separation, and lurid details exposed through a lengthy court battle, stood in contrast to Mr Griffin’s attempts to keep much of his personal and business dealings hidden from view. 

He is described by former and current employees at Citadel as methodical, self-motivated and rooted in quantitative analysis. Some say he is intense but others see his intensity as part of a relentless, almost military desire for continual improvement that is instilled in the organisation.

Although he is not known for basking in the limelight, Mr Griffin does maintain a public image. It was while he was with Ms Dias that he entrenched himself in Chicago’s cultural and political scene. 

An avid art collector, his name adorns one section of the city’s Art Institute after a $19m donation. In 2016, he paid $500m to buy two paints — a Jackson Pollock and a Willem de Kooning — in one of the largest ever private art deals.

The family name of Mr Griffin’s grandparents was given to the Gratz Center at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago after an $11m donation. He is serving the last in a five-year term on the University of Chicago’s board of trustees, where he has previously donated $125m. According to a spokesperson for Citadel, Mr Griffin has given away more than $700m in charitable donations. 

In politics, Mr Griffin has supported both Democrats and Republicans and maintains that he is not ideologically committed to either party, despite once describing himself as a “Reagan Republican”. 

He backed Chicago-resident Barack Obama for president in 2008, as well as aiding another Democrat — Rahm Emanuel — to re-election as the city’s mayor. But more recently, he has tended towards Republican candidates, backing both Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio in their presidential bids. 

Mr Griffin also backed Bruce Rauner when he was elected as Illinois state governor in 2014, endorsing a policy of tax cuts and business freedom. Despite an injection of $22.5m from Mr Griffin leading up to his 2018 attempt at re-election, Mr Rauner was beaten by Democrat JB Pritzker.

But the setback has not dissuaded Mr Griffin from remaining involved in politics, just as the financial crisis did not spell the end for Citadel. As for his real estate purchases, Mr Griffin is confident that his market instincts are sound. 

“In the US as a whole we still have a growing population,” he said at a conference in July last year. “That’s going to underpin home prices in years to come.”



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