Jonathan Wood

Who is Jonathan Wood?

Jonathan Wood is a British hedge fund manager and donor to the UK Conservative Party. He is the founder of the hedge fund SRM Global. He donated £500,000 to the Conservative Party in 2010.

Wood was born in Yorkshire and grew up in Whitstable, Kent, the middle of three children. He studied economics at Loughborough University. He was a successful trader at UBS, reportedly earning $2.4 billion for the bank over a six-year period. He was an investor in The Gadget Shop and, after the firm went into administration, he later filed a lawsuit for £100 million against former partners Tom Hunter and Chris Gorman. He alleged Gorman and Hunter had privately acquired Birthdays, ruining a potentially lucrative merger between the retailer and the Gadget Shop. The lawsuit was dismissed: Gorman and Hunter had made a loss on their acquisition and the judge described Wood as "a very hard and calculating man". Wood founded a hedge fund in 2006 – SRM Global. As of January 2011, it is rumoured that a second hedge-fund company will be created, SRM II.