30 Aspiring Facts About Ken Griffin You Probably Didn't Know

Ken Griffin, the founder and chief executive of the global investment firm Citadel, has been identified as one of the highest earning hedge fund managers in the world, for the past seven years, by the Forbes magazine. He is also famous for his contributions to various philanthropic causes. Here are some little known facts about the American investor:

1.  Till date, he has reportedly made donations of $700 million approximately, including around $300 million worth contributions to nonprofits in Chicago.
2.  Griffin was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame in the year 2008, along with David Swensen, Louis Bacon, Steven Cohen, Seth Klarman, Paul Tudor Jones, George Soros, Michael Steinhardt, Jack Nash, James Simons, Alfred Jones, Leon Levy, Julian Robertson, and Bruce Kovner.
3.  He, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded and supported the opening of a new charter school in Chicago called Woodlawn High School in October 2006.
4.  He along with his wife Anne Griffin founded the Kenneth and Anne Griffin Foundation in October 2009, through which he has contributed around $10 million for the Chicago Heights Early Childhood Center, $16 million to Children's Memorial Hospital, funding the University of Chicago’s Early Childhood Center.
5.  He gave $150 million donation to Harvard University, his alma mater, in February 2014, which was considered to be the largest single gift in Harvard's history at that time.
6.  He has been constantly listed as one of the most powerful people and as one of the most influential persons in the world, by several magazines since the year 2016.
7.  He donated a $19 million addition to the Art Institute of Chicago that was designed by Renzo Piano, along with the Paul Cézanne paintings which have been loaned, in the year 2007.
8.  He has contributed the "Evolving Planet" at the Field Museum of Natural History to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and has also been endowed professorships at the University of Chicago.
9.  His $16.5 million donation allowed the Field Museum to purchase a cast of the largest dinosaur ever discovered in 2018, a 122-foot-long Argentinian titanosaur named Máximo.
10.  Till date, he has reportedly donated over $550 million to various philanthropic causes, including tens of millions for educational causes to the various institutions in Chicago.
11.  He gave $12 million to the Chicago Park District to help fund separate paths for cyclists and pedestrians along the city's 18-mile lakefront, in December 2016.
12.  Griffin is reported to have made a contribution of $10 million to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in the year 2015.
13.  At the end of the same year, he had also donated an unrestricted gift of $40 million to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
14.  He is an active art buyer and is said to have purchased Willem de Kooning's 1955 oil painting, Interchange for $300 million, and Jackson Pollock’s 1948 painting, Number 17A, for $200 million, both from David Geffen.
15.  He was reported to have paid the record price of $60 million in the year 1999, for the Paul Cézanne's painting Curtain, Jug and Fruit Bowl.
16.  He had also bought the False Start by artist Jasper Johns for $80 million from Dreamworks co-founder David Geffen, in October 2006.
17.  He made a new $125 million gift to support the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago through his Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund in November 2017, following which the department was renamed as the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics.
18.  He reportedly acquired four real estate properties in Palm Beach, Florida, which is said to have cost him a cumulated sum of $130 million in the year 2013.
19.  Griffin is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
20.  He is said to have purchased the penthouse at 220 Central Park South in New York City for USD $238 million, which is a US record for a home purchase, in January 2019.
21.  He serves as the Vice Chairman of the Chicago Public Education Fund and is also a member of a number of organizations including the Economic Club of Chicago, and the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. He was elected to a five-year term on the University of Chicago's Board of Trustees, in the year 2014.
22.  Kenneth Cordele Griffin was born on October 15, 1968 in Daytona Beach, Florida. He reportedly excelled academically while also being the president of his math club, in his high school.
23.  It was reported that he started to invest during his freshman year at Harvard University after reading a Forbes magazine article in the year 1986, and that he had started a hedge fund focused on convertible bond arbitrage during his second year at Harvard.
24.  In an effort to acquire real-time market data, he reportedly installed a satellite link to his dorm, which helped him preserve capital during the stock market crash of 1987.
25.  Following his graduation, he was first provided with $1 million as an investment from Frank C. Meyer, an investor and founder of Glenwood Capital LLC, who is said to have made 70 percent return on the investment with Griffin's help.
26.  He founded Citadel in the year 1990 with just $4.6 million, and within a span of just 8 years, the company grew to a team of more than 100 employees and $1 billion in investment capital.
27.  He was included in CFO Magazine's Global 100, a list of the most influential people in the world of finance, in June 2002. A decade later, his company Citadel, received a Top 10 Great Workplaces in Financial Services ranking by the Great Places to Work Institute, based on a survey by Citadel employees in March 2015.
28.  He is said to have acquired 3 Carlton Gardens near Buckingham Palace for £95 million which equals $122 million in the year 2019.
29.  He donated $5.855 million to Conservative Solutions PAC, Freedom Partners Action Fund, Right To Rise USA and Future45 in the year 2015.
30.  Griffin is a member of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago and is said to have donated $11 million of the $38.2 million needed to build a new chapel at the church in the year 2011. The new chapel was named in honor of his grandparents as "The Gratz Center."
31.  Ken Griffin Net Worth: $11.7 Billion