Paul R C Marshall

MBA’85J

Chairman, Marshall Wace LLP

After graduating in History and Modern Languages, from St John’s College, Oxford, Paul joined Lloyds Bank International and worked in both Germany and Switzerland as a credit analyst and foreign exchange trader.

“I wanted to speed up my professional development and to maximise my life options so I decided that I needed an MBA. My preference was for a top European school that had a one year course, so choosing INSEAD was an easy decision to make.”

“INSEAD gave me one of the best years of my life - I met my wife, Sabina, whilst I was there. I had a great time at INSEAD and made many friends. I loved the intensity and mixing of work and play. My promotion was particularly good at play and I have very fond memories of the cabaret and of the many parties we had like ‘The Austerlitz party’ at the Auberge in Recloses on 2 December.”

When Paul left INSEAD he joined SG Warburg & Co’s fund management subsidiary Mercury Asset Management, where he rose to become CIO for European Equities. At the time of his departure in 1997, he was responsible for a team of 15, managing US$ 12b in assets.

With his partner Ian Wace, Paul went on to found one of Europe’s leading hedge fund groups, Marshall Wace LLP. Marshall Wace has offices in London, Hong Kong and Greenwich, Connecticut and employs over 160 people. Paul is also a Founder Trustee of the Hedge Fund Standards Board and Chairman of CentreForum, the liberal think tank which he founded in 2005.

“It is fulfilling to have founded and built a successful fund management business and to have been able to do this whilst maintaining a balanced home life with my wife and our two wonderful children.”

Paul is also a co-founder and trustee of ARK – Absolute Return for kids - one of the UK’s fastest growing children's charities. There he chairs ARK Schools, one of the leading chains of secondary academies in the UK, and has also taken a strong interest in their extensive AIDS treatment programmes in South Africa. He is also a founder trustee of the charity Every Child a Chance, a trust that aims to unlock the educational potential of socially disadvantaged children through the development and promotion of evidence-based, early intervention programmes.

“My ambitions for the future are two fold; to continue to grow our fund management business through delivering exceptional performance to our investors, and to contribute more widely to society by transforming the delivery of education to disadvantaged children and through associated public policy development (via the think tank, Centreforum).”

Paul is the author of the book ‘Tackling Educational Inequality’ which he wrote in 2006, and co-author, with David Laws, MP, of The Orange Book (2005).