Pierre Lagrange

Lagrange was born in March 1962 in Belgium.[1][2] He received both BS and MS degrees in Business engineering (Ingénieur de gestion) from the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management.[3]

Lagrange worked for JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs before co-founding GLG Partners in 1995 with Noam Gottesman and Jonathan Green as a division of Lehman Brothers. The name of the company is composed of the first initials of each of the founder's last names.[4] GLG became independent in 2000 and went public in 2007 listing on the New York Stock Exchange.[5] In 2010, GLG Partners was purchased by the Man Group for US$1.6 billion.[5] The two remaining GLG founders Noam Gottesman and Pierre Lagrange–Greene had left the company prior to the Man Group purchase–each received a $200 million shareholding in the Man Group in return for a three-year promise to stay.[4]

In 2008, Lagrange earned £400 million.[2] In 2009, the Sunday Times Rich List reported that his wealth declined £265 million to £195 million due to the credit crunch.[6] In September 2011, his wealth had rebounded to £300 million.[7]

In September 2011, he and his wife Catherine Anspach, with whom he has three children, announced their divorce. The divorce settlement was estimated at more than £160 million. [8]

He owned the Grade II listed Woodperry House in Oxfordshire, before downsizing in 2006 to a country house in Hampshire.[9] In August 2011 he also reportedly sold a house at 17 Kensington Palace Gardens to the Russian-born billionaire Roman Abramovich, for £90 million.[10]

Lagrange spoke of his opposition to Brexit in a 2019 interview with the Financial Times, characterising the 2016 vote as a "red herring" compared to wider problems facing the UK.[11]