Arpad Busson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
27 January 1963
- Hedge fund manager
- investor
- philanthropist
- financial analyst
(1996–2005)
Uma Thurman
(2007–2009, 2010–2014)
Arpad Busson | |
|---|---|
| Born | André Arpad Busson 27 January 1963 Boulogne-Billancourt, France |
| Occupations |
|
| Partner(s) | Elle Macpherson (1996–2005) Uma Thurman (2007–2009, 2010–2014) |
| Children | 3 |
André Arpad Busson (born 27 January 1963) is a French hedge fund manager, investor, and philanthropist. Busson started working in hedge funds in 1986 in New York.[1] He is the founder and chairman of the EIM Group, a fund of funds company. Busson is also active in a number of philanthropic causes around the globe. According to the French business magazine Challenges, he had a net worth of €500 million in 2013.
Arpad Busson's father, Pascal Busson, was a former French army officer and Algerian War veteran, who later turned financier.[2] His mother, Florence "Flockie" Harcourt-Smith, was an English former debutante. His parents met in Paris and named their son after the Hungarian-born banker Árpád Plesch (1889–1974), who not only was Florence's step-father (he was the second husband of her mother, Marysia Ulam Krauss Harcourt-Smith), but had also been her step-grandfather (Plesch's first wife, Leonie Caro Ulam, was his second wife's mother).[3] Plesch was a mentor to Italy's richest man, Gianni Agnelli, the late head of Fiat.[4] Busson's aunt, Joanna Harcourt-Smith, was a companion of Timothy Leary, who coincidentally was married in the early 1960s to Nena von Schlebrügge, the mother of Arpad's partner Uma Thurman.[5]
Busson is sometimes known by his nickname "Arki", a childhood conflation of Arpad and his mother Florence's nickname, Flockie.[6]
Some sources have suggested that, while growing up in France, became a budding child businessman at a young age by raking in early profits selling toothpicks door-to-door (to which he denies),[7] but he was educated in France and at the Institut Le Rosey, in Rolle, Switzerland. He then passed through national service as a medical orderly in the French army, of which a friend said: "He loved the discipline of the army – it was the making of him.".[8]
Finance career
Busson entered the world of hedge funds in 1986 working with Dubin Swieca.[9] He was later employed as a marketing representative for Paul Tudor Jones's fund Tudor Investments.
In 1991, Busson founded the EIM Group to provide fund-of-fund management services to the growing institutional market for hedge funds.[10] On 8 December 2008, EIM Group was reported as being a victim of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.[11]
In November 2001, EIM, an asset management company run by Busson, was asked by the FBI to help trace the finances of al-Qaida.[12] The FBI noted that the firm was not a target of the investigation, and was cooperating fully.[13]
In December 2013, Busson merged his EIM group with Swiss listed investment company Gottex Fund Management Holdings.[14][15] In July 2015, Busson was named the next executive chairman of Gottex Fund Management for the interim, following Joachim Gottschalk stepping down from the position and finding a permanent executive chairman.[16]
Gottex Fund Management rebranded itself as LumX and was eventually delisted from the Swiss Stock Exchange in June 2020 after suffering losses of more than $55 million the previous five years, essentially ending Busson's time as a hedge fund manager.[17][18]
