David Harding (financier)

David Winton Harding (born August 1961) is a British billionaire businessman, and the founder, and CEO of Winton Capital Management (or Winton). He had previously co-founded Man AHL (formerly Adam, Harding & Lueck). He favours quantitative investment strategies, using scientific research as the basis of trading decisions. His philanthropic works include the establishment of a chair at the University of Cambridge and a center at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, both dedicated to the study of risk, and the foundation of a research programme into the physics of sustainability at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. As of 2015, he is the joint-treasurer of Britain Stronger in Europe and chairman of the finance committee.

David Winton Harding was born in August 1961. He studied at Pangbourne College and went on to read physics at St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge, graduating in 1982 with first class honours. Later that year he began a traineeship at Wood Mackenzie, a stockbroker. After two years, he joined the futures brokerage firm, Johnson Matthey & Wallace, as a trader in commodity futures.

In 1985, Harding became a futures trader at Sabre Fund Management, one of the first commodity trading advisors (CTAs) in the United Kingdom. He drew on his scientific background to design trading programs for futures markets. He remained with the firm for two years, until founding Adam, Harding & Lueck (AHL) in 1987 with Michael Adam and Martin Lueck.

The firm created AHL as a quantitatively focused CTA. In 1989, ED & F Man (which later became the Man Group) purchased a 51 percent stake in the firm. When Man bought the whole firm in 1994, Harding became head of Man Quantitative Research. In 1996, he left to set up his own firm. According to Barron's, Harding had left Man after becoming frustrated by lack of focus on research and the bureaucracy of working in a large firm.

Winton Capital Management

Harding founded Winton, an investment management firm, in 1997. It was named after his middle name and his father's first name. According to Hedge Fund Review magazine, his aim was to demonstrate that a business can be successful based on empirical scientific research, rather than relying on marketing. Harding recruited scientists to the firm to create a strong research environment and to use quantitative, statistical research of market data to inform his trading decisions.

The fund had been launched in 1997 with $1.6 million in assets; as of 2013, the fund had returned on average 15% net per year. As of February 2016, Winton had over $30 billion in assets under management.

Harding has been described by industry commentators as "one of the pioneers of the hedge fund industry". He has been ranked among the top 50 hedge fund managers worldwide by Alpha magazine, which added him to their "Hedge Fund Hall of Fame",and he was listed at 95 on the Sunday Times Rich List 2016.

In 2010, he was reported to be London's highest paid earner at £60m a year. In September 2012, Harding was named at the top of a list of Britain’s biggest taxpayers. Within 6 days, Harding revealed that "he was paying £34 million in tax on his £87m income."

As of 2012 he was the firm's majority owner. Harding has previously served as Winton's president and executive chairman and, as of 2015, he was the CEO.

Harding has made major donations to educational and research institutions through his Winton Charitable Foundation. The foundation funded a professorship at the Statistical Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, the Winton Professorship of the Public Understanding of Risk, aimed at increasing understanding of the mathematics of risk for individuals and organisations. Harding is also the patron of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, which opened in 2009.

Harding's foundation, the David and Claudia Harding Foundation, has pledged £20 million to the Cavendish Laboratory, the University of Cambridge's Department of Physics, to establish The Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, a research programme to apply theoretical physics to issues of the sustainability of natural resources. The donation to the Cavendish is the largest since it was created in 1874. He is one of the managers of the Winton Fund for the Physics of Sustainability, which manages the programme's funding. In 2011 Winton began a five-year sponsorship of the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books which was rechristened the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. Harding's foundation has also committed £5m to the Francis Crick Institute in London for cancer research. In 2014, it provided a £5 million donation to the Science Museum in London, the largest single donation in the museum's history, to build a gallery of mathematics.

In November 2015, he was announced as joint-treasurer of Britain Stronger in Europe and chairman of the finance committee. In May 2016, it was announced that Harding had donated £3.5 million to the campaign.

Harding is married to Claudia Harding and has four children, three of whom are from previous relationships.