George Osborne was appointed chairman of an investment fund based in London, worth $3bn (£2.4bn). This is yet another new job for the former chancellor.
The 51-year old has been appointed to head Lingotto Investment Management. This new venture is backed by Dutch conglomerate Exor, and French insurance giant Covea.
Exor is owned and operated by the Agnelli Family, the Italian dynasty that includes Fiat cofounder Giovanni Agnelli.
Mr Osborne, who has served as chairman of the partners’ council at the company for the last five years, will now step down from this position to take up his new role.
He will continue to hold several other positions, however. These include Chairman of the British Museum, President of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, Partner at Robey Warshaw, managing partner of venture capital firm 9yards Capital, and Director at Osborne & Little – his family’s wallpaper company.
The former politician has also taken up the after-dinner speech circuit. He is a regular contributor, along with former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls on Channel 4’s The Andrew Neil Show.
Mr Osborne served as Conservative MP for Tatton from 1997 until 2017. From 2017 to 2020 he was Editor of the London Evening Standard and a BlackRock advisor.
John Elkann told the newspaper that Lingotto is a fund for investment managers who are “very talented”. The fund was “entrepreneurial and focused on letting the managers do what they are good at”.
James Anderson is another Lingotto hire. He was the star fund manager at Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and has come out of retirement to launch a fund focused on innovation in public and private sectors.
Scottish Mortgage, under Mr Anderson’s leadership, became an asset to the stock market for its early investments in tech giants like Tesla, Alibaba, and Amazon.
Since he left the company in April 2022 some of his investments have suffered as interest rates have risen.
Anderson argued that there are still many reasons to be optimistic today.
“One of my greatest puzzles is why markets are so short-term and sceptical, when innovation and change have increased, and returns over 5, 10 and 20 years are greater than ever,”