The hedge fund founder and schools reformer has some unexpected friends and is more complex than his Brexit credentials suggest
We all know it’s filthy lucre that makes the world go round, but what’s less clear is why the very rich so often want to further dirty their hands in the news business? If anyone knows the answer it could be Sir Paul Marshall. The hedge fund founder was an early investor in GB News and is being touted in Conservative circles as a media mogul-in-waiting, with a bid in the works for a venerable British newspaper group.
Marshall, who is worth £680m according to the Sunday Times Rich List, already has a public record for transformational zeal in the education system that is equalled only by his campaigning enthusiasm for Britain’s future outside Europe. One of his fans is Baroness Morgan, a former chair of Ofsted and one-time political secretary to Tony Blair. As adviser to Marshall’s academy schools chain, Ark, she has praised his “single-minded obsession” with changing the lives of poor children through education, adding that he “commits brain, time and money to making that happen”.
