David Harding (financier)

David Winton Harding was born on 24 August 1961, the youngest of four children, and raised in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. He attended Pangbourne College, Berkshire and was educated at the University of Cambridge where he attended St. Catharine's College. At Cambridge, Harding studied natural sciences and in 1982 he graduated from his BA with first class honours. After two years, he joined the futures brokerage firm, Johnson Matthey & Wallace, as a trader in commodity futures. ==Investment management==

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. 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. and to use quantitative, statistical research of market data to inform his trading decisions. , 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 September 2012, Harding was named at the top of a list of Britain's biggest taxpayers. In 2012 he became the firm's majority owner. Harding had previously served as Winton's president and executive chairman. In 2015 he became CEO. ==Philanthropy==

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, Harding's foundation, the David and Claudia Harding Foundation, has pledged £20 million to the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory to establish The Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, an advanced research programme to apply theoretical physics to issues of the sustainability of natural resources. The donation to the Cavendish is the largest since the famous laboratory was established in 1874. 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 2019 Harding donated £100m to Cambridge University, the largest donation by a British citizen to any university. The funds will go towards supporting the Harding Scholars, a distinguished postgraduate scholarship system for more than 100 PhD students, similar to the Rhodes Scholarship and the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Additional funding will be used to attract students from under-represented groups, allowing Cambridge to recruit the best and brightest students regardless of their social situation. Harding's £100m benefaction was a landmark donation for UK fundraising efforts and closely followed other major donations by leading US entrepreneurs including Michael Bloomberg, Stephen Schwarzman, and Jaffray Woodriff. The Labour Party suggested it was a consequence of his Conservative Party donations. ==Political activity==

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 a Conservative Party donor. He donated almost £1million to the party whilst David Cameron was in power and during the 2019 general election donated £200,000 to the party, stating in an interview that he would consider leaving the country if a Labour government targeted hedge fund companies and increased taxes. ==Personal==

Harding has five children and is married to Claudia Harding. ==References==