38 1GM Saturday October 17 2020 | the times
NewsSaturday interview
per cent of their fortunes. Dryly, he
adds: “I’ve actually been to some of
those meetings and I’ve said, ‘Is this
number really 50? Shouldn’t it be
more like 80 per cent or 90 per cent?’ ”
Gently waspish and with a
Gatsbyesque air of amused
detachment, Mr Studzinski has an
extraordinary network — he has 39
godchildren and the friends who
come up in conversation include
Kristin Scott Thomas, Nicholas
Hytner, Diana, Princess of Wales, and
Pope John Paul II, who made him a
him a knight of the Order of St
Gregory for humanitarian work.W
e’re meeting in
Pimco’s office in
central London.
Almost no one is
around but he wears
an immaculate suit and tie, set off by
splendid turquoise cufflinks and a
16th-century French gold ring (he has
another filigree sixth-century ring
that belonged to two popes that he
reserves for Sundays).
Catholicism is central to his life. He
has a private chapel in his Chelsea
home containing candlesticks that
belonged to St Ignatius Loyola and
meditates regularly with City high-‘I have a strong belief that nothing
The City luminary John Studzinski, whose faith
drives his philanthropy, is shocked at the greed
of the super-rich, he tells Julia Llewellyn Smith
W
hen the banker John
Studzinski talks to
the super-rich about
the possibility of
them sharing a touch
more of their vast fortunes with
worthy causes, “several — naming no
names” have expressed the same
reservation. “They say, ‘But then myranking and my rating on the Rich
List will go down,” he says, eyes
twinkling with a mixture of urbane
amusement and horror. “Isn’t that
shocking?”
American-born but the proud
bearer of two British passports (“I
need two, normally I travel a lot”), Mr
Studzinski, 64, doesn’t share theirfears. A City superstar who had stints
at Morgan Stanley, HSBC, Blackstone
and is now vice-chairman of the
investment managers Pimco, he
reckons that he donates about half his
vast earnings (rumoured to be £13
million a year at their peak), as well
as volunteering in homeless shelters.
This week he announced that his
Genesis Foundation, launched in
2001 to give people in the performing
and visual arts their first break, was
establishing a £1 million fund to aid
freelancers whose careers had been
scuppered by the pandemic. “Even ingood times, it’s pretty tough to get a
job if you’ve just come out of the
Royal College of Art or Rada,” says
Mr Studzinksi, known to colleagues
as Studz. “Now we’ve got gale-force
storm winds and it’s impossible.”
The fund is working with well-
established organisations such as the
Almeida Theatre to offer the chance
to work on “projects with tangible
outcomes”. “My philanthropy is very
focused on human dignity and people
like Simon Rattle told me, ‘The most
important thing is not just to support
the freelancers, but to actually give
them real work,’ ” he says.
The dignity theme underlines all of
his charitable interests, from Riding
for the Disabled to the homeless
daycare centre The Passage and
Arise, which combats human
trafficking and slavery. Yet he also
believes that volunteering would help
the younger generation to boost their
self-worth.
“It’s really about inculcating
children — from maybe the ages of
six or eight — in being able to give.
I’ve taken children of about ten to
shelters to dish out food to a
homeless person. They realise they’re
doing a proper job and develop a
great sense of self-esteem from being
given responsibility at an early age.”
Born to first-generation Polish
Catholic immigrants in a small town
north of Boston, Mr Studzinksi, who
has never married, was encouraged
by his mother, a nurse, and father, an
accountant, to be community-spirited:
volunteering in soup kitchens from
the age of six, setting up a freephone
helpline offering information about
sexually transmitted infections at 14,
and between school and university
working at an Indian leper colony.
Yet he doesn’t think the US is more
volunteer-minded than Britain, nor
does he credit generous American tax
breaks for their higher charitable
giving. “Actually the Gift Aid scheme
[allowing higher-rate taxpayers to
deduct 25 per cent of charitable
donations from their taxable income]
here is pretty generous too.”
Instead, he thinks that we need to
change the mindset of the super-rich.
A recent study revealed that out of
18,000 “ultra-high net worth” people
in Britain with assets of more than
£10 million, 90 per cent did not give
to charities. Young tech billionaires
are said to be particularly reticent.
“Organisations say to me, “We
should call so-and-so on the Rich List
for a donation.’ I say, ‘You need to
assume either that person has already
thought about what they’re prepared
to give money to. Or, at the other end
of the spectrum, they’re actually just
not interested.”
He adds: “I still have a strong belief
that nothing is worth having unless
you share it with others, that the
shroud has no pockets and that we
shouldn’t be attached to too many
things, which in my case are my faith
and my loved ones.”
To convert the Scrooges to his
philosophy, he urges them to find a
cause to champion. “The worst thing
you can do is just ask someone for
money. I call that ‘chequebook
philanthropy’ and I find it horrible.”
He counts on his fingers the stars of
the British “giving list”. “The
Sainsburys, Vivien Duffield, the
Westons, the Wolfsons. James Dyson
with his Dyson Institute, [the hedge
funder] Christopher Hohn, he’s given
extraordinary amounts of money to
combat modern slavery.”
He would like a British equivalent
of the US “giving pledge”, under
which the likes of Bill and Melinda
Gates and Warren Buffett donate 50