Divorce isn’t known to bring out the best in people. And in some cases, it brings out the pure blind animus that animates certain Martin Lawrence movies. This seems the only possible explanation of Cooper vs. Hohn, formerly Cooper-Hohn vs. Cooper-Hohn.
You see, after Jamie Cooper cured her husband Chris Hohn of being a bastard, he founded a hedge fund that pledged one-third of its management fee income to a charity dedicated to helping children, hence it’s not-at-all-creepy name: The Children’s Investment Fund. Some years back, he stopped doing this, ostensibly because it had enough money to solve all problems faced by children, although coincidental evidence suggests it had more to do with the fact that the Cooper-Hohns were going to go back to being Cooper and Hohn.
This left a problem, however: While Hohn was no longer giving a hapenny to The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, he still had to run the thing—with his ex-wife. So they came up with a solution: CIFF would give a tenth of its assets to a new charity also dedicated to helping children run by Cooper. This would both be in keeping with CIFF’s mission to help children, and also in keeping with the former Cooper-Hohns’ desire not to have to see or otherwise deal with one another.
And yet, having made the deal, Hohn backed his handpicked arbiter in the matter’s decision to legally challenge said deal. Unlike his effort to keep the lion’s share of his money, however, this has now failed, with the British Supreme Court ruling that Cooper’s Big Win Philanthropy should have its £270 million.
“The truth of her claim could not be denied no matter how many legal obstacles they tried to throw at her,” he said. “This is a well-deserved and long overdue victory for Ms Cooper, who has dedicated her life to helping underprivileged children in developing countries and plans to use this money to continue that important mission.”
CIFF had a statement on the matter, as well:
CIFF said the court ruling would have “no significant impact on the work that CIFF does around the world to improve the lives of children”.
Well, we’re glad the British legal system exists so that people like Chris Hohn can pursue fundamentally unnecessary and meaningless vendettas against the mother of his four children.
Billionaire ordered to pay £270m to charity after divorce settlement [Guardian]