At age 38, Texas billionaire John Arnold decided to step away from high finance. Arnold had quickly climbed the ranks at scandal-ridden Enron, where he scored an $8 million bonus in 2001—the very year lower-level employees’ pensions and 401(k) plans were obliterated in the wake of the energy trading company’s collapse. He emerged unscathed from the fallout, and used his bonus to start a hedge fund that made him the youngest billionaire in the U.S.
By 2012, his net worth had ballooned to $3 billion, but Arnold decided his life needed new meaning. “I started thinking more about giving the money away than making more of it, that was really the signal to me that I want to be spending my time on the other side of the table and I’m physically and mentally and emotionally exhausted with trading natural gas,” he recalled in a podcast interview. Arnold and his wife turned their full attention to their charitable foundation, and chose to focus their energy on overlooked social issues in order to maximize their impact. After surveying the many market failures in the health care system, the couple took on drug pricing reform as one of their pet projects.
Read Full Article »