Is Chris Hohn the real heir to Warren Buffett?

One thing to start: The top-10 private equity funds have taken their largest share of US fundraising in more than a decade last year, as institutional investors rein in commitments and back larger managers amid lacklustre distributions.

In today’s newsletter:

• Buffett’s British successor

• Wells Fargo’s dealmaking push

• Hedge funds chase Venezuela’s debt

The Oracle of London?

With Warren Buffett “going quiet” after six decades at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway, he’s left a void for a steady leader to guide investors through the frenetic world of crypto, meme stocks and financial short-termism.

The UK’s Chris Hohn has entered the frame.

“They say there’s no free lunch in finance, but actually, I do think long-termism in a great company is a free lunch”, Hohn said last year.

His hedge fund TCI’s returns are backing him up.

TCI surged 27 per cent last year after it profited from big bets on the aerospace sector, cementing Hohn’s place as one of the world’s best-performing hedge fund managers.

Hohn is known for his fearsome activist campaigns against companies including Airbus, Alphabet and the London Stock Exchange Group, but also for buying and holding companies that he sees as having powerful competitive advantages against rivals.

TCI managed just under $80bn at the start of this year. Some of its holdings massively outperformed in 2025: GE Aerospace stock surged 90 per cent, Safran increased 45 per cent and Airbus gained more than 30 per cent.

The S&P 500 climbed 16 per cent last year while the Stoxx Europe 600, the region’s benchmark index, gained almost 17 per cent.

Of course, Buffett wasn’t just the world’s most famous investor. His annual letters also offered life and business advice.

While Hohn may not have built Buffett’s loyal following yet, he’s sought to leave his mark.

Hohn’s been a longtime advocate for climate action and donated to green protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion.

And TCI’s accounts show the group made a $797mn charitable donation last year, confirming Hohn as one of the UK’s biggest donors.

Wells Fargo walks down Wall Street

Plenty of banks have attempted to compete on Wall Street only to fail and double down on their retail businesses.

But Wells Fargo, the 173-year-old lender with a reputation for focusing on “kitchen tables, not league tables”, is hoping the stars have aligned for its investment banking ambitions.

Late last year the bank committed $29.5bn to fund a large portion of Netflix’s deal to buy most of Warner Bros Discovery, in what Wells says is the largest financing of its kind ever.

It was also involved in the other biggest tie-up of 2025, railway company Union Pacific’s $85bn purchase of rival Norfolk Southern, a deal that will earn Wells a $52.5mn fee.

In total, by mid-December last year, Wells had advised on $423bn of deals, and it has lifted its position in the M&A rankings from 17th to ninth, according to LSEG.

Chief executive Charlie Scharf is behind the push, betting he can turn the US’s fourth-largest bank by assets into a credible Wall Street player.

The biggest boon for the bank’s efforts to establish itself as a force in M&A was US regulators removing a punitive $2tn asset cap in June. This has made a “real difference” to Wells’ debt capital markets business, allowing it to flex its balance sheet to win deals, according to its corporate and investment banking chief Fernando Rivas.

The bank has also been on a hiring spree, recruiting 125 managing directors since 2019, mostly investment bankers with sector expertise. A good chunk of these new recruits come from collapsed Swiss investment bank Credit Suisse.

Wells has breezed past Credit Suisse’s new owner UBS in the closely watched M&A league tables. Now it’s hot on the heels of British investment bank Barclays and Wall Street boutique Centerview Partners.

The race for Venezuela’s niche debt

While Venezuela tries to navigate a new political order under the purported rule of the US, hedge funds are busy on a very different quest.

Over the past few days, hedge funds have begun trying to track down billions of dollars’ worth of esoteric claims against Venezuela that could produce handsome profits if the country moves closer to paying off its debt.

It’s a high-wire gamble. These claims are a less conventional way of investing in the country’s debt than buying sovereign bonds or the notes of PDVSA, the state-run oil company.

Investors historically were largely uninterested in these notes not only because of the scant likelihood Venezuela would pay them off, but also because they were highly illiquid.

With the US’s intervention in Venezuela, this non-bond debt — which includes promissory notes, receivables and arbitration claims — has suddenly got a new lease on life.

Some of the most sought-after claims are those that have been awarded by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an organisation run by the World Bank that settles arbitration disputes.

But the problem is this debt is scattered around the world. Investors estimate there’s roughly $30bn of it out there, and much of it’s held in amounts less than $500mn.

Funds including Carronade Capital Management and Canaima Capital have been tracking down these international claims, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, Seaport Global, an investment banking and trading firm that’s well known for brokering sovereign bonds, has been one of the most active participants trying to find potential sellers and facilitate trades. (Seaport did not respond to a request for comment. Carronade and Canaima declined to comment.)

Not everyone’s sure the situation will end with a neat payday. 

According to Jay Newman, the mastermind behind hedge fund Elliott Management’s long battle with Argentina for a payout on its defaulted debt, the Trump administration is mainly interested in making sure the country is going well for Venezuelans.

Which might not be so good for hedge funds: “And that desire is antithetical to giving creditors a good deal.”

Job moves

• Bridgewater has appointed its co-chief investment officer Bob Prince as chair of its board, replacing outgoing chair Mike McGavick. Margo Cook, who completed her term as co-chair last year, will become an external director.

• UBS has hired Adam Winslow as chair of global insurance in its financial institutions group. Winslow was previously CEO of Direct Line Group.

• Latham & Watkins has hired David Oppenheimer and David Varne as real estate finance partners and Lucy Oddy as a structured finance partner in London. All three join from A&O Shearman.

• Advent has promoted Eric Wei to managing partner in Palo Alto.

• JPMorgan has hired Suneel Hargunani as head of Emea equity capital markets syndicate. He previously worked at Citi, where he was co-head of the Emea ECM unit.

• ICR has appointed Anton Nicholas, most recently ICR’s president of strategic communications, as chief executive. He succeeds ICR co-founder Tom Ryan, who will become executive chair of the board.

Smart reads

Mortgage revolution As UK banks try to hold on to customers tempted by crypto and flashy fintechs, they’re trying out innovations of their own, the FT writes. At Lloyds, the latest scheme is to overhaul home buying — by moving it on to the blockchain.

Duty-free Few companies challenged the Trump administration when it first announced “liberation day” tariffs last year. But now more than a thousand have sued, Bloomberg reports, hoping for refunds if the US Supreme Court strikes down the levies.

Gold wars Venezuela’s gold holdings in the Bank of England vaults have been the subject of a big legal dispute for years, The Guardian writes. What happens to the £1.4bn in bullion now?

News round-up

Jefferies discloses $30mn loss on lending exposure to First Brands (FT)

Warner Bros rejects Paramount’s ‘inadequate’ $108bn hostile bid (FT)

Zilch buys Lithuanian lender Fjord Bank to secure European banking licence (FT)

Carillion finance directors accept FCA fines eight years after its collapse (FT)

Donald Trump moves to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes (FT)

KKR to invest $1.5bn into European data centre business (FT)

US seeks to control sales of Venezuelan oil ‘indefinitely’ (FT)

JPMorgan cuts all ties with proxy advisers in industry first (WSJ)