John Grayken


John Patrick Grayken is an American-born Irish billionaire financier, the founder and chairman of the private equity firm Lone Star Funds.
According to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2019, Grayken is worth £5.063 billion, an increase of £300 million from 2018.

Early life

John Patrick Grayken was born in June 1956, and was brought up in Cohasset, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He received a BA degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1982.

Career

Grayken first worked at Morgan Stanley, before joining the Texas billionaire Robert Bass.
Grayken founded Lone Star in 1995.
In 1999, Grayken became an Irish citizen, "for tax purposes", renouncing his American citizenship.

Philanthropy

In March 2017, Eilene and John Grayken gave a $25 million gift to the Boston Medical Center to create the BMC Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine. The gift is the largest donation in BMC’s history. While the couple usually makes their donations anonymously, they explained that they were going public this time to de-stigmatize addiction and to encourage others to do so as well.
In April 2017, John P. Grayken gave a leadership gift to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to fund the Grayken Program in International Real Estate at the Wharton School.

Personal life

Grayken divorced his first wife soon after he became a "tax refugee"; they reunited within a month of the final divorce decree, but divorced again six months later. Grayken later married actress Eilene Davidson in London, and they have four children.
Grayken is married to Eilene Davidson, a British theatre producer and former actress.
As of 2015, they owned Pyrford Court, Surrey, which features prominently in the 1976 movie, The Omen. Pyrford Court is a Grade II listed 15-bedroom house, built in 1910 for Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh. As of 2017, they live in a $70 million home in Chelsea, London, purchased through a company in Bermuda.