{"text":[[{"start":8.54,"text":"This summer, court officials in Jersey twice visited a house linked to a secretive billionaire. Their intention was to serve him with deposition papers in a long-running dispute involving a Formula 1 team he had invested in."}],[{"start":20.36,"text":"Both visits were unsuccessful. Despite evidence that they had come to the right address, officials on the island were rebuffed. The September 1 deposition date came and went with no sign of him."}],[{"start":31.56,"text":"But then elusiveness seems characteristic of this particular financier: Peter de Putron, one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in the world of trading."}],[{"start":41,"text":"His fortune is largely founded upon G-Research, a London-based quantitative research and technology firm, where an army of what one former employee describes as “maths and physics geeks” develops trading strategies that are assigned to an offshore hedge fund. G-Research has grown to employ about 1,000 people, a scale similar to the capital’s largest hedge funds. One rival said he would be “amazed” if de Putron’s fund wasn’t running “$10bn-$12bn”."}],[{"start":67.68,"text":"De Putron’s investments encompass a broad range of interests, from AI-powered defence companies to the Williams F1 team. His establishment credentials are impeccable; he was educated at Eton College and Oxford university, companies he controls have donated almost £1mn to the UK’s Conservative Party, and a foundation run by his wife Hayley has given millions to charities backed by the British royal family. In a speech published in 2017, she received a public thank-you from then Prince Charles."}],[{"start":97.2,"text":"Yet despite these public endeavours, de Putron takes his privacy seriously. He has been known only to give the precise location for a meeting minutes beforehand, with instructions to turn up with only a pencil and paper, and no electronic devices. Even some longtime associates don’t have his mobile number; one executive who met him multiple times claimed not to know his surname. There are no photographs of him publicly available on the internet. He is reportedly over six feet tall, trim, with blond hair. Those who have met him say his manner is intense, direct and at times awkward."}],[{"start":129.52,"text":"At one public event he dressed in a “cliché of what a spy would look like”, says one person who knows him. “A hat, mac, sunglasses worn indoors and outdoors.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":139,"text":"It’s little wonder, then, that the Jersey officials could not locate him — even though his ties to the Channel Islands are well known. He grew up in Guernsey and over the past two decades has lived and been engaged in philanthropy in Jersey. The Channel Islands’ biggest school quiz bears his name: the de Putron Challenge."}],[{"start":156.56,"text":"De Putron has other places to go, however: he also has properties in the UK and Mustique, sources say. Companies House currently lists his place of residence as the Cayman Islands. He declined to be interviewed for this article."}],[{"start":169.36,"text":"But the reclusive billionaire is gaining new visibility. The march of G-Research has helped cement London as a global quant trading powerhouse to rival New York. G-Research is “the story of a factory of quants”, says one person who knows de Putron."}],[{"start":184.26,"text":"At the same time his name is attracting public — and legal — scrutiny. A data centre in South Carolina being built by a company he appears to be linked to has run into fervent local opposition. A bitter legal feud between Williams F1 and a former employee has led to the deposition request for de Putron that threatens to draw him further into the spotlight."}],[{"start":205.38,"text":"Observers question whether de Putron can hope to stay in the shadows for much longer."}],[{"start":209.52,"text":"De Putron’s roots in the Channel Islands run deep. His grandfather was a famous jurat, or lay judge, in Guernsey and his father a prominent local politician and entrepreneur. A road in a village outside St Peter Port bears the family name."}],[{"start":223.26,"text":"His father was “old school” and “against welfare junkies”, de Putron said in a 2013 lawsuit relating to his deceased father’s estate. He recalled that his father would provide his children with “an education and nothing more”, according to court documents."}],[{"start":238.16,"text":"After Eton and Oxford, de Putron completed an MBA at the Wharton School in 1992. He later joined a hedge fund by the name of IFM, where he was involved in developing its quantitative investing models — using maths, data analysis and computer algorithms to engineer trading strategies, rather than merely human judgment."}],[{"start":257.16,"text":"The European hedge fund industry was in its infancy. De Putron launched his own hedge fund, De Putron Fund Management (DPFM), in 1997 with backing from billionaire George Soros and a series of loans from his father. Counterparties and investors at the time recall that performance at the fund, which specialised in bets on the outcome of mergers and acquisitions, was unremarkable."}],[{"start":280.76,"text":"One investor said that de Putron was keenly interested in Jim Simons’ legendary quant hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, and recalls that he soon began experimenting with data- and model-driven strategies to predict price movements."}],[{"start":293.4,"text":"A transformational moment for de Putron came in the early 2000s with the hiring of two quants from the US hedge fund giant DE Shaw: Suneil Setiya and Greg Skinner. De Putron founded a new entity, Gloucester Research, in 2001, to dip his toes into quantitative trading. He later put his brother-in-law Ben Leadsom, who is married to his wife’s sister, the former Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom, in charge of the new company. Skinner became his right-hand man as head of investing at DPFM."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":323.58,"text":"Over the next two decades or so his network of businesses evolved through several different iterations, restructurings and name changes. Investors and prime brokers said that following the financial crisis, and after the death of his father in 2009, de Putron gradually returned client funds and focused on running his own money."}],[{"start":342.6,"text":"By the time Gloucester Research appears to have been rebranded as G-Research in 2012, it had become the most important entity in a web of related companies that ultimately manage its founder’s money."}],[{"start":354.4,"text":"G-Research’s bread and butter is “mid-frequency statistical arbitrage”, which means it specialises in predicting how equities prices will move over the course of hours and days, placing thousands of relatively small bets to profit from its predictions."}],[{"start":368.8,"text":"Data is first obtained and then scrubbed, before it is evaluated for signals that can potentially predict prices, and fed into sophisticated machine learning models requiring vast amounts of computing power. G-Research then sends these price predictions and signals to affiliate trading entities offshore."}],[{"start":385.76,"text":"The total amount de Putron oversees today is a mystery; even most of those working at G-Research don’t know the assets of the related hedge fund. But insiders praise its “outsized” performance and enviable Sharpe ratio, a measure of risk-adjusted returns."}],[{"start":400.72,"text":"His approach is in contrast to the likes of prominent quants such as Simons, Winton Capital Management founder David Harding and Cliff Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management, all of whom built successful institutional businesses by raising billions of dollars from blue-chip investors such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds."}],[{"start":421,"text":"De Putron’s network of companies operates more like a proprietary trading group or a souped-up version of a private family office, where the bulk of the money is his own and he doesn’t rely on external clients, according to people familiar with the operations."}],[{"start":434.92,"text":"He understands mathematics but he’s not a trader like billionaire hedge fund rivals Michael Platt or Chris Rokos. De Putron has helped decide whether to deploy the trading strategies conjured up by G-Research and is skilled at structuring his sprawling web of entities."}],[{"start":449.96,"text":"“He’s not the brains behind every piece of [G-Research], but he’s created the conditions for its success,” says one associate. “He has reliably hired well . . . and he invested heavily in technology at the right time.”"}],[{"start":462.36,"text":"Details about the scope of de Putron’s trading operations are scant. G-Research’s footprint gives some idea of its size; it is headquartered in a Soho office that is larger than its neighbour in the same building, the European outpost of Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest alternative investment managers. It has a US office in Dallas, which is expanding."}],[{"start":482.96,"text":"But the operation appears to be structured to ensure most revenues are booked overseas."}],[{"start":487.64,"text":"G-Research itself doesn’t trade any of the quant strategies its team has developed. Instead, the trading “signals” are sent to offshore entities where they are overseen and implemented by teams of “execution traders”. People familiar with the situation say that every investment decision is made offshore and the firm is scrupulous about documenting this."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":507.44,"text":"So, for example, while the bulk of G-Research’s operations and people are based in London, court documents from 2025 showed that the ensuing intellectual property from its efforts was owned by an entity called Corbiere Limited, then incorporated in the Marshall Islands, an archipelagic country roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia."}],[{"start":528.94,"text":"The Marshall Islands have sparse disclosure requirements. Companies registered there don’t have to disclose public ownership records and there is no requirement to file financial statements."}],[{"start":539.44,"text":"Since neither G-Research staff nor the entities they work for make regulated investment decisions or provide advice, they are not required to register with the Financial Conduct Authority."}],[{"start":550.36,"text":"Most mainstream or larger asset managers in the UK are required to have full FCA authorisation, with specific permissions for portfolio management and safeguarding client assets, and capital requirements. (Another entity under de Putron’s umbrella, Bell Rock Capital Management, which swallowed DPFM’s business in 2012, is FCA-regulated. It employs 50 people who turn “deep analysis into original trading strategies”, according to its website)."}],[{"start":578.56,"text":"Such arrangements between the UK and offshore entities are subject to stringent “transfer pricing” rules that are meant to ensure fees for services are paid at the “arms-length” rate that a third party would charge. Tax authorities police such transactions fiercely and falling foul of the rules can land businesses with hefty fines."}],[{"start":596.88,"text":"One company, Airain Limited, provides an illustration of how operations work. It is controlled by de Putron and has historically had staff in Guernsey. But its legal base has been in jurisdictions including the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. It trades statistical arbitrage strategies, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter."}],[{"start":618.08,"text":"All three jurisdictions offer substantial tax breaks for investors. In Guernsey, for instance, there’s no capital gains tax and a standard corporate income tax rate of 0 per cent, with a rate of 10 per cent for certain investment management services. The ability to compound returns in low-tax jurisdictions over decades has been a key source of de Putron’s returns, say those who know him."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":640.36,"text":"“Tax and structuring” is high on his list of priorities, says one of the people who know him. “G-Research is committed to maintaining responsible tax practices, complying with local tax laws and regulations and with OECD guidance,” according to its website. “The primary objective of G-Research’s tax strategy is accurate and timely tax compliance.”"}],[{"start":661.52,"text":"De Putron himself has in recent years taken advantage of “resident but not ordinarily resident” tax status in Jersey, which allows him to keep worldwide income that is not transferred into Jersey out of the island’s tax net."}],[{"start":674.24,"text":"Other quants of de Putron’s standing have faced substantial tax bills with different arrangements. For example Winton founder Harding, one of the UK’s top taxpayers, revealed in 2018 that he and his firm had paid £1bn into the UK Treasury coffers over a 10-year period."}],[{"start":691.28,"text":"De Putron is non-resident in the UK and so the number of days he can spend in the country is limited. His fleeting visits — sometimes in and out within a day on a private jet — are the stuff of lore in his firm, contributing to his air of mystery."}],[{"start":704.72,"text":"“He’s a bit like Lord Voldemort,” says one person who worked for him, referring to the elusive Harry Potter character whom few mention directly. “We don’t really say his name much around here.”"}],[{"start":716.08,"text":"Quantitative outfits live and die not by the success or failure of individual traders, but by the strength of the models they build to trade with."}],[{"start":723.18,"text":"As a consequence, quant funds are notoriously obsessed with protecting their intellectual property, or IP. If rivals can replicate their strategies, it will result in “alpha decay”, where whatever market inefficiency is making profits possible is eroded."}],[{"start":737.8,"text":"De Putron appears to surpass his rivals with the lengths he will go to guard IP at all costs, through the way that he hires, structures the organisation, and wields the law. At times this obsession with security has created tensions internally because it adds friction to employees’ day-to-day work, according to people familiar with the situation."}],[{"start":757.2,"text":"G-Research conducts multiple rounds of interviews and tests to vet potential employees. Beyond trying simply to identify smart people, it wants to avoid hiring mistakes that could result in high turnover, and reduce the risk of departing employees taking proprietary information with them."}],[{"start":772.56,"text":"It has prioritised hiring graduates or PhDs, typically maths or physics experts, to embed them in the G-Research ecosystem, rather than hiring staff from rivals. Historically there was a big Cambridge university contingent; more recently G-Research has hired from a more diverse pool of universities and become more international."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":794.48,"text":"Compensation at G-Research is linked to the performance of the fund but ultimately is at the discretion of de Putron. As the principal investor he pockets the lion’s share of the spoils, according to former staff. People are paid “well at the bottom, not so well at the top”, says a headhunter."}],[{"start":811.76,"text":"A second rival adds “it’s very hard to hire people out of there” because employees are closely monitored. He says he has conducted some “proper cloak and dagger meetings” to meet employees of G-Research, “but the way they are tied in and their fear of litigation” makes it hard to lure them away."}],[{"start":829.1,"text":"For those who do join G-Research, the company makes extensive use of non-disclosure agreements, non-compete clauses and “golden handcuffs” such as payouts deferred for up to five years. Even relatively junior staff have been contractually required to stay out of the market for two years after leaving, according to people familiar with the matter."}],[{"start":849.52,"text":"The organisation is highly siloed, which restricts any one employee from building a complete picture of how it operates. Two people familiar with the matter liken G-Research to a vast jigsaw where each team had only one piece. In their experience, an individual team may have a detailed, granular understanding of the piece they have but they don’t know how it all fits together. “The left foot doesn’t know what the right foot is doing,” says one person who worked there."}],[{"start":876.9,"text":"G-Research has variously used metal detectors and weighing scales to scan staff and prevent theft, lockers for personal devices before entering the office, and secure zones in the office to prevent staff from straying into areas they don’t belong, according to court documents and two people familiar with the matter."}],[{"start":1148.14,"text":"“It was completely Fort Knox,” says another former employee."}],[{"start":1148.64,"text":"The computer network has been similarly segregated, with fingerprint scanners conferring employees access to areas limited to their teams and areas of expertise. Strategies were “stored in encrypted form and obfuscated . . . so that the characters are unrecognisable”, according to court documents."}],[{"start":1149.14,"text":"Employees communicate via an internal email system that is largely isolated from the public internet and external connections. The office network has been configured so that it is extremely difficult for IP to “walk off into the internet”, according to a person familiar with the situation."}],[{"start":1149.64,"text":"The final layer of protection is legal. De Putron assiduously pursues employees seen to have violated their contracts."}],[{"start":1150.14,"text":"In 2008, de Putron suffered the departure of his most senior lieutenant Skinner, along with Setiya and three trading system engineers who left to start their own company, later named Quadrature Capital, now one of London’s top quant trading firms."}],[{"start":1150.64,"text":"An acrimonious court case ensued, with the corporate entity that owns G-Research’s intellectual property alleging misuse of confidential information by the departing executives. The founders later came to a confidential settlement with G-Research."}],[{"start":1151.14,"text":"Then in 2014, when an employee abruptly resigned from a G-Research company and left for Hong Kong, the company suspected he had taken proprietary data. It obtained a court order the following day, seeking to prevent him from using it."}],[{"start":1151.64,"text":"The employee, computer coder Ke Xu, subsequently pleaded guilty to charges of fraud in the UK and was sentenced to four years in jail. He was later subjected to a private prosecution by G-Research companies, which led to further jail time."}],[{"start":1152.14,"text":"After the Xu incident de Putron became even more stringent about protecting IP, doubling down on sophisticated supervision and security systems. “The message came down from above: security, security, security,” said a person familiar with the situation. “Zero is the only acceptable number of security breaches.”"}],[{"start":1152.64,"text":"As de Putron’s interests have expanded, it has become harder to keep everything behind closed doors."}],[{"start":1153.14,"text":"And as disputes have arisen, they are being litigated squarely in the public’s gaze, bringing a new and unprecedented level of scrutiny."}],[{"start":1153.64,"text":"One legal case relates to plans for a data centre and power plant in sleepy Spartanburg, South Carolina. This is no small endeavour; if built it would generate enough electricity to power about 320,000 homes, according to legal documents, putting it among the top few dozen such projects in the US."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":1154.14,"text":"But it is not being built by a “hyperscaler”, the tech companies investing tens of billions in data centres for cloud computing and data storage. Instead, it is being financed by a private equity firm called NorthMark, which appears to have links to de Putron."}],[{"start":1154.64,"text":"The New York-based company has had personnel and addresses in common with a separate firm, Dorilton Capital Management, which a court ruling found to be substantially controlled by de Putron. NorthMark is led by Jen Byrne, who was formerly chief operating officer at G-Research."}],[{"start":1155.14,"text":"The Spartanburg facility, NorthMark said last year, would help it meet demand for compute from “current and future investment partners”. Quantitative trading requires enormous processing power and capacity, running thousands of simulations using billions of data points to evaluate the success rates of strategies."}],[{"start":1155.64,"text":"The project has benefited from the kind of tax arrangements that sources say de Putron tends to favour. NorthMark subsidiary Valara negotiated lucrative tax breaks with South Carolina, agreeing significantly discounted annual payments in lieu of property tax, as well as $30mn in separate tax credits."}],[{"start":1156.14,"text":"Local residents and a band of pro bono lawyers filed for an injunction to stop construction of the data centre and power plant, arguing that they have been misled by Valara as to the size and scope of the facility and bemoaning a lack of transparency around its backers. They say the $2.8bn project’s scope has ballooned as power generation is expected to increase from about 50MW to 460MW."}],[{"start":1156.64,"text":"The injunction was dismissed on procedural grounds, and the campaigners have vowed to appeal against the decision and fight on."}],[{"start":1157.14,"text":"“This project was identified as a minor land development project. There is nothing minor about this project,” says one local resident, who says he was “completely blindsided” by the magnitude of the power plant."}],[{"start":1151.84,"text":"The company has said the new request for hundreds of megawatts is part of a pre-planned phasing of construction. “The scope of the . . . facility has not changed,” the company said, according to local media. “The plans being carried out today are the same as those presented to state and county officials from last year.”"}],[{"start":1170.64,"text":"Challenging the locals and their lawyers is Kirkland & Ellis, one of the world’s most feared and revered law firms, and several lobbyists. NorthMark did not respond to requests for comment, but after the injunction’s dismissal said the facility would be “thoughtfully designed and responsibly built” and an “asset to the region”."}],[{"start":1190.08,"text":"In another legal case, de Putron himself has been dragged into the centre of the battle. This is a dispute between Dorilton, which is the parent company of Williams F1, and Williams’ former head of marketing, Claudia Schwarz, who was dismissed in 2022."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":1204.2,"text":"Dorilton has sued Schwarz and her company alleging breach of contract and overbilling, which she has denied. A New York judge in 2025 granted a motion to dismiss claims that Schwarz had aided and abetted fraud and received unjust enrichment, although the claim that her company breached a contract is still being argued."}],[{"start":1223.52,"text":"Separately, Schwarz has sued Dorilton, alleging wrongful termination and defamation, and de Putron personally, claiming that he interfered in contractual relationships. De Putron and Dorilton filed to dismiss in April, arguing that the “theory” behind the lawsuit was “utter fiction”."}],[{"start":1239.96,"text":"Schwarz has alleged not only that de Putron is the “indirect owner of Williams Grand Prix Racing”, but also has accused him of insisting that the team not be marketed to African Americans and the LGBTQ community."}],[{"start":1253.28,"text":"Dorilton and Williams say de Putron was “merely a third-party passive investor”, according to a court decision. In the motion to dismiss Schwarz’s lawsuit, de Putron called the other allegations “fabricated”, “incendiary” and “designed more to skew the public record than to state a viable claim”."}],[{"start":1270.4,"text":"But a panel of New York judges found there was “substantial evidence that de Putron was directly and intimately involved in the management” of Dorilton. In October last year, a New York Supreme Court judge granted a request to seek his deposition in Jersey."}],[{"start":1286.24,"text":"That is what brought the court official to the door of his Jersey property this summer. They did not find him there."}],[{"start":1292.4,"text":"The legal dispute is ongoing, but if he is successfully deposed then de Putron’s careful maintenance of a low profile may be brought to a sudden end."}],[{"start":1304.71,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1793363924_2499.mp3"}