High-risk investing: the Christian defence

Philip Richards is an extreme investor. His willingness to bet against the crowd has turned his initial £150,000 investment in his hedge fund company RAB Capital into £150 million since 1999. In particular, his Special Situations Fund, which he manages personally with the credo ‘to maximise returns with minimal restrictions’, has performed spectacularly. Since he started the fund in January 2003, with a big bet on an obscure Russian gold mine, it has made the handful of investors who were in at the beginning almost 40 times their money.

‘I believe it’s the best performing fund in the world,’ says Richards, an avowed Christian not averse to preaching his own book. This early success grabbed investor attention, enabling him and his partner Michael Alen-Buckley, who is married to Rocco Forte’s sister Gianni, to build RAB into one of Britain’s highest-profile hedge fund groups, attracting shareholders such as the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal.