Sir Chris Hohn, who runs The Children's Investment Fund Management, was ranked tenth on a Rich List of the world's highest earning hedge fund managers for 2015.
He was the only Briton on the list, which was dominated by Americans but also included one Norwegian - Ole Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors.
Sir Chris is one of Britain's leading hedge fund managers having set up The Children's Investment Fund Management, or TCI, in 2003.
He was caught up in the row over the privatisation of Royal Mail after it emerged TCI made a huge profit buying and then selling shares for a profit - fanning the flames in the row over whether the Government had sold the company too cheaply.
Hohn's wealth is estimated at £720 million (NZ$1.267 billion) even after he was told to hand over £337 million (NZ$593 million) in 2014 following the collapse of his marriage to Jamie Cooper-Hohn.
The couple - who had homes in London, the United States and the West Indies - had fought over assets totalling more than £700 million (NZ$1.2 billion) at the High Court before a judge finally settled on the staggering sum.
The couple's long-running divorce case bordered on farce at times with Hohn accusing his ex-wife of seeking maintenance payments for a dog that never existed.
They married in Washington DC in 1995 and had four children, including triplets, before divorcing in April 2013.
Hohn, who was born in Addlestone, Surrey, was knighted in the Queen's birthday honour's list in 2014 for services to philanthropy and international development.
The star hedge fund manager has given more than £1billion to charity through The Children's Investment Fund Foundation which is linked to his business and was run by his wife.
The foundation was set up by Hohn and Cooper-Hohn in 2004 to improve the lives of children living in poverty in developing countries around the world.
Hohn, whose father was a Jamaican-born car mechanic who moved to Britain in the 1960s, and whose mother was a legal secretary from East Sussex, graduated from the University of Southampton with a first in accounting and business economics.
He then completed the MBA, or Master of Business Administration, course at Harvard Business School where he was among the top 5 per cent of all graduates.
Before setting up TCI he worked for private equity group Apax Partners and Wall Street hedge fund Perry Capital.
In an interview with the Financial Times in December, Hohn described TCI as 'the antithesis of the classic hedge fund' as it celebrated a bumper year while rivals floundered.
"We take risk," he said.
"They are short term whereas we are long term. They are passive, and we are engaged. They charge high fees, we charge less."
Alpha magazine calculates the earnings of hedge fund managers by counting gains on their capital in their funds as well as their share of the fees. Hohn and TCI declined to comment.
Cooper-Hohn had said the wealth had been created as a result of their "partnership". But Justice Roberts concluded that Hohn - who was educated at a state school - was a "financial genius" who had made a 'special contribution' to the creation of the couple's fortune.
Hohn had told the judge: "Over the long term I am an unbelievable money-maker."
He said he was a billionaire and in the "top ten career investors. But he also told the judge he did not 'really care about money" and that it did not bring happiness.
