Sir Paul Roderick Clucas Marshall is a British investor and philanthropist. According to The Sunday Times Rich List in 2020, Marshall is worth £630 million.
Early life
Paul Roderick Clucas Marshall was born on 2 August 1959 in Ealing, London, England, the son of Wadham College, Oxford-educated Alan Marshall, managing director, Philippine Refining Company, and Mary Sylvia Clucas, daughter of Dr T. S. Hanlin. His sister is the journalist Penny Marshall. When his parents moved to the Philippines and then South Africa for his father’s job with Unilever, Marshall boarded at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, in England. From there he went up to St John's College, Oxford to read History and Modern Languages, and subsequently took an MBA from the INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France.
Career
He is the co-founder and chairman of Marshall Wace LLP, one of Europe's largest hedge fund groups. Marshall Wace was founded in 1997 by Marshall and Ian Wace. At the time, Marshall Wace was one of the first hedge funds in London. The company started with $50 million, half of which was from George Soros. Funds managed by Marshall Wace have won multiple investment awards and the company has become one of the world's leading managers of equity long/short strategies. Marshall Wace manages $39 billion and has recently opened an office in China. He is a member of the Hedge Fund Standards Board.
Political affiliations
Marshall had a longstanding involvement with Britain's Liberal Democrats party. He was research assistant to Charles Kennedy, MP, former leader of the Liberal Democrats in 1985 and stood for Parliament for the SDP/Liberal Alliance in Fulham in 1987. He has made appearances on current affairs programmes such as BBC Radio 4's Any Questions. In 2004, Marshall co-edited with David Laws MP. Chapters were written by various upcoming Liberal Democrat politicians including Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, Vince Cable MP, Ed Davey MP and Susan Kramer Laws, describing the pair's ambition in publishing The Orange Book, wrote "We were proud of the liberal philosophical heritage of our party. But we both felt that this philosophical grounding was in danger of being neglected in favour of no more than ‘a philosophy of good intentions, bobbing about unanchored in the muddled middle of British politics’" The book attracted initial controversy when launched but both it and the term 'Orange Bookers' to describe those sympathetic to its outlook continue to be frequently referenced to describe a strand of thought within the Liberal Democrats. Between 2002 and 2015, Marshall donated £200,000 to the Liberal Democrats. Marshall left the party in 2015 over its policies on the EU and its support of continuing British membership. In July 2016, Marshall donated £3,250 to Michael Gove's Conservative leadership campaign.
Marshall was a public supporter of Brexit during the European Union membership referendum in 2016. He gave a donation of £100,000 to the Leave campaign. Writing for Brexit Central in April 2017 on the UK exiting the European Union, Marshall wrote: "This is a huge opportunity for the UK. Our ambition is that the UK should be a champion of free trade, open and outward looking to the world and built on strong institutions." In an interview with the Financial Times in 2017, Marshall said: "Most people in Britain do not want to become part of a very large country called Europe. They want to be part of a country called Britain."
Philanthropy
Marshall was the founder, and chairs the board of trustees of the independent research institute the Education Policy Institute. For over a decade he was also chairman of the EPI's previous incarnation, think tank CentreForum. He is a founder trustee of ARK and chairman of ARK Schools, which is one of Britain’s leading providers of academies and has also played a pioneering role in developing new programmes for inner city education. Other initiatives spun out of ARK include Future Leaders, Teaching Leaders, Maths Mastery, English Mastery, Frontline and Now Teach. He is also a founding trustee of the charity Every Child a Chance. He was appointed lead non-executive director at the Department of Education in 2013. In April 2015, it was announced that Marshall would donate £30 million to the London School of Economics to establish The Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship, alongside Sir Thomas Hughes-Hallett. The institute was launched in 2015, with a core aim "to improve the impact and effectiveness of private contributions to the public good". Marshall was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to education and philanthropy. In 2017, Marshall gave funding to a new political news website called UnHerd.
Publications
Marshall has written widely about education. In 2012, he edited a book on improving the education system called The Tail: how England's schools fail one child in five – and what can be done. Contributors included Labour MP, Frank Field, Professor Chris Husbands of the Institute of Education and Stephen Machin of the London School of Economics. He is also co-author of Aiming Higher: a better future for England's schools with Jennifer Moses, and author of Tackling Educational Inequality Marshall's other publications include: The Market Failures Review, Britain After Blair and Football and the Big Society.
Personal life
He is married to Sabina. His wife is French and owns an antique shop on the King’s Road in Chelsea. Marshall is father of Mumford & Sons band member Winston Marshall and musician Giovanna Marshall. In April 2017, he told the Financial Times in an interview that he had no intention of retiring.
