john arnold centaurus

Just weeks before the federal guidelines were due for an update, Teicholzs blistering report appeared in the prominent medical journal The BMJ, charging that the governments panel of scientists had failed to consider evidence that would have done away with long-held worries about eating saturated fat. In 2007, Arnold became the youngest billionaire in the U.S. His firm, Centaurus Advisors, LLC, was a Houston-based hedge fund specializing in trading energy products that closed in 2012. The extent of that individuals ability to freely support causes may be magnified by using an LLC instead of a nonprofit, but it also further blurs the already faded line between philanthropy and politics. In May 2012, John announced his retirement from Centaurus Energy to concentrate on philanthropic activities. He was formerly Senior Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center. FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2009, file photo, John Arnold, then head of the hedge fund Centaurus Advisors of Houston, testifies before the The Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington,. info@naturalgasintel.com Arnold is still quiet. John Arnold, the billionaire manager of the Houston hedge fund Centaurus Advisors, told investors and employees Tuesday that he plans to retire, according to people familiar with the . John Arnold is Founder and Co-Chair of Arnold Ventures. May 17 (Reuters) - John Arnold, a former Enron trader and hedge fund honcho known as the "king of natural gas", is backing an energy-focused credit fund that will aim to take advantage of. [30] The former foundation was sued over a pre-trial web tool by the family of a victim who was murdered, but the District Court and a U.S. Appellate Court dismissed the complaint. ), Were not looking to create an organization of safe success, Laura Arnold says. John Arnold managed to walk away from Enrons 2001 collapse with a seven-figure bonus and no accusations of wrongdoing attached to his name. IN THEIR philanthropy, the Arnolds like to say, they follow data where it leads rather than let themselves be guided by ideology. More than $10 million more in Arnold Foundation grants have come since. Ioannidis, whose name is almost synonymous with scientific skepticism, says he has seen immense progress in recent years. [52], , "Centaurus scoops up National Coal shares", Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, "The Young Billionaire Behind the War on Bad Science", "John Arnold Is Said to Close Hedge Fund and Return Investor Money", "When a billionaire trader loses his edge - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blogTerm Sheet", "Houston billionaire trader John Arnold retiring at 38 - Houston Chronicle", "Legendary Energy Trader John Arnold to Retire", "Hedge Fund Billionaire John Arnold's Fund Was Up When He Announced He Was Getting Out", "Ex-Trader at Enron to Retire From Hedge Fund", New York Times: "CORPORATE CONDUCT: THE TRADER; Enron Trader Had a Year To Boast of, Even If" By DAVID BARBOZA, "A speculator who is in for the long haul", "Centaurus's John Arnold: The king of natural gas - Nov. 24, 2009", "Meet the Texas billionaire who backed Philly soda tax and now is funding attack ads in N.J. Senate race", "Smart trades that made this a good year for some", "Centaurus scoops up National Coal shares", "John D. Arnold's CFTC (U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission) speech", "Houston's World Cup bid adds a power player in John Arnold", "A Thirtysomething Billionaire Couple Take on Tough Issues Via Giving", "The City Fund has given out over $100 million to support charter and charter-like schools", How a billionaire couple greased the skids for Nancy Pelosis drug pricing bill, "Why this billion-dollar foundation is becoming a corporation", "Changemakers: The Leaders Reshaping Communities Around the World", "Two Texas Billionaires Think They Can Fix Philanthropy", "A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the Industry Is Rattled", "Obscure Model Puts a Price on Good Healthand Drives Down Drug Costs", "How a Billionaire Couple Greased The Skids For Nancy Pelosi's Drug Pricing Bill", "Laura and John Arnold Foundation to Restructure as LLC", "Why one billionaire is calling out Silicon Valley's favorite philanthropic loophole", "Are Donor Advised Funds Good for Philanthropy? Flagship We talk about the . A hugely successful energy trader, Arnold once worked at Enron, earning the disgraced company a reported $750 million the year it went bankrupt. Arnold funds Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), a nonprofit that created a formula to price drugs. Comedian John Oliver spent 20 prime-time minutes on HBO last May mocking the reign of terrible science on TV news shows and in public debate. After making millions for Enron, launching his own hedge fund, and becoming a billionaire, John Arnold retired at 38. No. He is also the Co-founder of PandemicTech, an Austin-based venture philanthropy launched in 2016 that supports health security innovators on the . Arnold Ventures is a group of more than 100 passionate people from all walks of life who feel a deep urgency to help people in need. 19-2616 (3d Cir. FORTUNE magazine once dubbed Arnold one of the least-known billionaires in the US. His profile in the public consciousness is almost nonexistent, and he rarely gives interviews. [30][31], In 2013, the Arnolds donated $10 million as a private donation to the National Head Start Association after the United States federal government shutdown of 2013 had closed the pre-K Head Start programs. [8] In 1996, a year after starting at Enron,[8] he moved to oversee the trading of natural gas derivatives at the Natural Gas Desk upon the departure of Jeff Bussan. . are the four most dangerous words, Arnold wrote on Twitter. By the time he was 14, Arnold was running his first company, selling collectible sports cards across state lines. In 2001, even as Enron was collapsing amid an accounting scandal that covered up billions in debt, he was reported to have earned $750 million for the company. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. In 2019, William Schambra, co-editor of The Giving Review and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, pointed out that the field of 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s), and foundationsincluding their tax benefits as well as respective legal limitationsexists because they are ways weve chosen, as a democracy, to encourage and channel charitable giving and political activism. We circumvent them at our peril. Far from arbitrary, this body of regulationwhich Schambra is certainly right to call annoyingcodifies a common understanding between Americans and their government: Philanthropy is crucial for a healthy civil society. Several other Houston area billionaires made their money during a record year for oil and gas, such as George Bishop, who. All Rights Reserved. Of course, this new LLC model comes with the cost of losing the Arnold Foundations tax exemption. Stem Cell Junk Yards Reveal a New Clue About Aging. Republished A month after legendary natural gas trader Arnold abruptly announced that his Houston-based Centaurus would wind down its $2 billion master fund following a decade of unrivalled gains, Whalley. A lot of people didnt know it was out there, Arnold says. You dont shift a culture overnight, Nosek says. In 2012, the Arnolds joined the Giving Pledge, an oath made by billionaires such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to donate at least half of their wealth. Legendary natural gas trader John Arnold is closing down his flagship Centaurus fund, sources said o n Wednesday, ending an era in which the former Enron wunderkind defined the high-risk, big . In 2011 Centaurus Energy Master Fund LP was fined $75,000 by the New York Mercantile Exchange for violating position limits in natural gas trading (see Daily GPI, Dec. 28, 2011). 12 -- John Arnold, Centaurus Advisors. | [23] Other multi-million gifts followed to other education programs, for example to Washington, D.C. city schools for merit pay, to Teach for America, and to StudentsFirst. Had something similar happened on Wall Street, he tweeted, the perpetrator would have been sentenced to 10 years in jail and the bank would have been fined a billion dollars. In the name of social experimentation, in 2020 Arnold supported Oregon's referendum decriminalizing all drugs, which passed. In a glass conference room at the Arnold Foundations officeswhich occupy the same space as the old Centaurus trading floor, a 15-minute drive from the glass tower whose entrance was once adorned with Enrons famous EArnold explains that his and Lauras initial plan had been to simply locate the most effective organizations and write them checks. Donate today to assist in promoting the principles of individual liberty in America. And then, after a couple of years, people were like, oh, no, hes actually like that.. [49], Arnold is married to Laura Elena (Muoz) Arnold. "Looking back what I was doing was geographic arbitrage.". Having spent more than a decade picking apart nutrition science, Taubes soon found himself cofounding an organization with a substantial grant from the Arnold Foundation, to rebuild the study of obesity from the ground up. Credit: Arnold Ventures. A guy such . At the time, his net worth was estimated to be around $3 billion. At age 38, Texas billionaire John Arnold decided to step away from high finance. They would also have to take on a far more ambitious project: The Arnolds would have to try and fix science itself. [3][8] His father was a lawyer and died when Arnold was 18. What does that say about American philanthropy? A person who answered NGIs call at Centaurus said the firm was not making any comments or talking to reporters. Resource #6: John D. Arnold runs Centaurus Energy Advisors, LLC, a Houston, Texas based hedge fund that specializes in trading energy products. Far from simple charity, thats a recipe for plutocracy. For us, the principle of it is unchanged. (Arnold was not involved in the fraud.) Consent Then, one day in November 2011, he was listening to the podcast EconTalk, hosted by libertarian economist Russ Roberts. The comedian John Oliver spent 20 prime-time minutes on HBO last May mocking the reign of terrible science on TV news shows and in public debate: After a certain point, all that ridiculous information can make you wonder: Is science bullshit? In its first seven years, according to Fortune, the fund never returned less than 50 percent. [1], A 1995 graduate of Vanderbilt University, he completed a degree in mathematics and economics in three years. Nosek is also still campaigning to convince researchers to preregister what they plan to analyze and report in a study, so that they cant adjust their experiment on the fly or hide less-than-dazzling resultsa problem that Goldacre is also tackling. On the top of that list was the energy trading legend that is John Arnold. [26] In 2008, the Arnolds were original signatories of the Giving Pledge,[27] a pledge by some high-net-worth individuals to donate the majority of their income to philanthropic causes during their lifetimes. He also created Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic investment firm focused on health . [1] [23] Arnold has also given to The City Fund, an organization focused on growing the number of charter schools in the USA, and its political arm, Public School Allies. It wasnt long before Arnold had the answer to his doubts. Brian Nosek had pretty much given up on finding a funder. Unlike Tom Steyer, a billionaire who earned his wealth investing in oil and natural gas and now hypocritically blames those commodities for devastating the planet, John Arnold says little about climate change. And for two years they had been rejected again and againwhich was, by 2011, discouraging but not all that surprising to the 38-year-old scientist. Bothersome bureaucracy notwithstanding, tax exemption and tax deduction are tangible benefits that acknowledge that compact. He has also served as the Investment Manager for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation since 2011. 5. Text. [30] The new entity is known as Arnold Ventures LLC with the charter "to remove barriers between data and decisive action, working swiftly across the policy-change spectrum. Let us know if we're missing any workplace or industry recognition - Add Awards. As a pipeline company, Enron had a direct view onto many of the factors that influence gas prices. Like Tom Steyer, George Soros, and a number of other mega-donors on the Left, John Arnold earned his vast wealth as a hedge fund investor. Laura Arnold has served on the boards of the Innocence Project[29] and the REFORM alliance. Centaurus Advisors, which posted eye-popping returns and led him to become the youngest billionaire in the US in 2007. Like a number of up-and-coming researchers in his generation, Nosek was troubled by mounting evidence that science itselfthrough its systems of publication, funding, and advancementhad become biased toward generating a certain kind of finding: novel, attention grabbing, but ultimately unreliable. World No. Arnold was not criminally charged with any wrongdoing at Enron, but he was named in a bankruptcy lawsuit by other Enron staff. Worse yet, whenever evidence came along that contradicted the consensus about the dangers of eating fatoften evidence that was much stronger than the evidence for the dangersit was ignored or not even published. 1 manager, John Arnold, offers a tricky model to follow because he trades only energy futures, and my guess is he's a very short-term trader. Arnold was raised in Dallas, Texas, and he was the younger of two sons. (WIRED wrote about NuSI in issue 22.09). It became extraordinarily frustrating.. [25][1] The organization was founded in 2010. Prior to founding Centaurus Energy, he held various positions within Enrons Wholesale Division, including Head of Natural Gas Derivatives. |, Related topics: The Arnolds have a multiple-decade timeline to work on problems. Yet the most remarkable thing about the Arnold Foundations research integrity projects is that they already appear to be paying off. In the 1830s, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville famously compared Americans penchant for civic association with that of France and England: Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States.. John D. Arnold is the founder and the only shareholder of Centaurus Energy Advisors, a hedge fund specializing in trading of energy. ISSN 2577-9877 [17] August 2008, Centaurus acquired around 10% of the shares of National Coal Corporation (NCOC). The next year the Arnolds promised $35.5 million more. The philanthropy's core mission is to invest in evidence-based solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice. Founded in 1992, Centaurus was formed with a singular focus - to provide unparalleled service, support, technology, and education to independent financial advisers in the securities industry. Six months later the Arnold Foundation made a $4.7 million seed grant to the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI), the nonprofit Taubes cofounded to support fundamental research on diet and health. [51] They have three children. In some cases, they may even have more favorable tax deductions when donating appreciable securities to a 501(c)(3) public charity. Ultimately his army of volunteers could verify the findings of only about 40 percent of the studies. John Douglas Arnold (born 1974) is an American philanthropist, former Enron executive, and founder of Arnold Ventures LLC, formerly the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. John Arnold, then head of the hedge fund Centaurus Advisors, testifies before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington, August 5, 2009. The problem even had a name: the file drawer effect. The Supreme Court has come under intense scrutiny lately over a series of reports suggesting potential conflicts of interest. Denis Calabrese, the Arnold Foundations president, says they dont expect immediate results. We can feed off that. Figuring out exactly which rewards work best and how to simultaneously change the incentives for researchers, institutions, journals, and funders is now a key area of interest for Goodman and Ioannidis. But compared with the benefit of near-total anonymity, wealthy elites like the Arnolds are forgoing the tax advantages of a foundation or traditional nonprofit to further withdraw from public scrutiny. Houstonian John Arnold is the founder of Centaurus Capital LP, an energy-focused, family office investment fund. Arnold graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1995, taking only three years to finish his degree. In 2008, the young trader is among the top three traders who earned the most money, his salary amounted to $ 1.5 billion. One of the counterparties Amaranth approached was Centaurus. "[36], In 2019, Arnold spoke out against donor-advised funds (DAF), criticizing them for delaying charitable giving and promoting giving to institutions that are less likely to need the money. When former Enron trader and Texas billionaire John Arnold donated more than $1 million to a November 2014 initiative to reform the public pension system in . But in July 2012, Nosek received an email from an institution whose name he didnt recognize: the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The Biggest Microbiome Study Sheds Light on Shared Health Risks, The Little Bang Helping Physicists Study the Infant Universe. We are able to use resources in another structure. Compared with the IRS-mandated transparency of a private foundation, 501(c)(3) public charity, or 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, private companies are black holes for public disclosure. In 2012, after growing his firm, Centaurus Advisors, from an initial $8 million to $5 billion in less than a decade, he announced that he was walking away to pursue other interests. Foerster, Marny Eng And John Oates On New Indie Dramedy Gringa, Chief Justice John Roberts Wife Made Over $10 Million As Legal Consultant, Report Says, John Rahms Golf Odds Reach Historic Low For 2023 Mexico Open, New Podcast By Shark Tank Alum Daymond John Announced Today Focuses On Defining Moments Of Influential People, A Celebration Of Film Composer John Williams With The New York Philharmonic, Elton Johns Honky Chteau Sounds As Mellow As Ever, John E. Murray (1959-2018): A Birthday Appreciation, The Top 10 Richest Women In The World 2023, The World's 15 Youngest Billionaires 2023, Billionaires 2023: The Top 10 Richest People In The World, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information. One floor on top of the next. In nutrition, the whole foundation of the research had been flawed. We are Centaurus. They internalize the risk of mistaking correlation for causationnot because theyre smarter than scientists but because they have money riding on the outcome. And good traders, as Arnold sees it, naturally come to appreciate something that researchers too often miss: Its very easy to be fooled by your own data. If we want to attack an issue, we will do whatever it takes. [39], Arnold Ventures LLC has invited criticism with its involvement in many controversial areas. From the little I know about the science of nutrition, your study makes a lot of sense, Arnold wrote. Not long after the podcast went online, he received a five-line email from Arnold. Washington DC | New York | Houston | Pittsburgh | Mexico City Calgary | Chile. Click here to request a free trial. Science Has Its Problems, But the Web Could Be the Fix, Psychology Is in Crisis Over Whether Its in Crisis, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.. Mr. Arnold serves on the boards of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investor-led venture capital firm dedicated to funding transformational technologies that will reduce global greenhouse gas emissions; Civica, Inc., a nonprofit generic pharmaceutical company; and The City Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting new governance models in K-12 education. He is universally described as quiet and introspective. Prior Houston-based Centaurus has been one of the most successful hedge funds in the industry, delivering a compound annual return of about 130% since it was founded by Arnold in 2002 after the collapse of Enron. Wealth: $3.3 billion. The legal reporting required for these categories, as annoying as it is, is how our democracy ensures that giving and political activity remain visible and accountable to the public. ), The backlash against Teicholz also furnished one of the few occasions when anyone has raised an eyebrow at the Arnolds funding of science critics. Arnold has said that the first phase of his life was 100 percent trying to make money and that its now 100 percent trying to do good. As The Wall Street Journal noted, in US history, there may have never been a self-made individual with so much money who devoted himself to philanthropy at such a young age.. We asked ourselves, What is the point of having two separate entities? It completely transformed what we could imagine doing, Nosek says. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. At its peak Centaurus managed some $6 billion before Arnold closed the fund and retired in 2012 at the age of 38, establishing the Laura and John Arnold Foundation with his wifea former oil executivesoon after. Hardly anyone in the world of nutrition science seemed willing to question the science behind the low-fat diet, even after Americans grew fat and diabetic in record numbers. Gerrymandering endangers democracy. At its peak Centaurus managed some $6 billion before Arnold closed the fund and retired in 2012 at the age of 38, establishing the Laura and John Arnold Foundation with his wifea former oil executivesoon after. As co-founders, Laura and John actively engage in the organization's overall direction and daily execution. He announced that he was closing Centaurus in a letter to investors: After 17 years as an energy trader, I feel that it is time to pursue other interests., Arnold tells me that he had lost some of his passion for trading. But as it happens, Nosek is just one of many researchers who have received unsolicited emails from the Arnold Foundation in the past few yearsresearchers involved in similar rounds of soul-searching and critique in their own fields, who have loosely amounted to a movement to fix science. [15], He then founded Centaurus, a hedge fund, with his previous year's bonus in 2002. A new study shows . The 13 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride, The Best Barefoot Shoes for Walking or Running, Palantirs Plan to Decipher the Mysteries of Long Covid. Whether all this momentum will lead to transformational change decades from now is impossible to know. Billionaire John Arnold pushes for charity reform. Directors E.J. Put a Stake in "Zombie Charity.". [16], During the collapse of Amaranth Advisors, Centaurus is widely credited as being one of the major players on the other side of their position, returning as much as 150% in 2005. Amaranth, which was gambling with money from large pension funds, suffered a $6 billion loss and collapsed. He started working at Enron four days later. En 2002, us su bonificacin para financiar Centaurus . While. The foundation aims to foster a culture in which individuals have the best chance to succeed and prosper, while encouraging a sense of responsibility, compassion and reinvestment toward their communities and society as a whole. By law, natural gas pipelines had to make much of their information public, and around the time Centaurus was forming, more of that information began to appear online. More importantly, private corporations may spend unlimited sums influencing elections, legislation, and political issues under the Constitutions First Amendment right to free speech with none of the limitations on lobbying and election interference the IRS imposes upon nonprofits (in exchange for limited tax exemption). Yet the foundation is also focused on reforming what the Arnolds see as a broken public pension systema project that, in practice, usually means cutting payments to retirees, raising retirement ages, and switching new workers to 401(k)-style plans. All rights reserved. John Arnold's tweet, "A new study shows " are "the four most dangerous words," is a perfect crystallization of the philanthropist's skeptical attitude toward a lot of scientific research. . Centaurus Advisors. In finance, meanwhile, at least when one is trading with ones own money, there are strong incentives to work to that stronger standard. NGI All News Access. Foundations and 501(c)(3) public charities are barred from electioneering. | Mr. Arnold is also Founder of Centaurus Capital LP, a family office investment fund with a specific focus on the energy industry. He questioned everything, Fleisher says. Laura and John established the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2010 with a straightforward mission: to improve lives through evidence-based solutions. Centaurus Energy Master Fund LP, a Houston-based energy hedge fund that was founded by John D. Arnold after the collapse of Enron Corp., was fined $75,000 by the New York Mercantile Exchange . The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries. What's Fishbowl. Much of the Arnolds philanthropy has funded causes favored by the Left, such as ranked-choice voting, litigation against supposed Republican gerrymandering in congressional maps, and the eco-Right, groups infiltrating the conservative movement with a left-wing global-warming agenda. His ~$3 billion fund, Centaurus, was down 4% in 2010 YTD, according. Fix terrible science. from Vanderbilt University and lives in Houston, Texas with his wife and three children. It became one of the biggest science stories of the year. On a warm October day in 2014, envoys from 15 of America's wealthiest families gathered at Circle T, Ross Perot Jr .'s 2,500-acre ranch outside . And those are just a few of the people who are calling out iffy science with Arnold funding. And so, at age 38, Arnold walked away from it all. Why he started his own firm energy trading firm, Centaurus Advisors, and why he ultimately hung it up as a trader to focus all of his energy on philanthropy. [3][4][5][6][7], In 2019, Arnold became the chairman of Houston's 2026 bid for the FIFA World Cup. A former executive at Salomon Brothers later told The New York Times that there were very few incidents in the history of Wall Street comparable to Arnolds success that year. 123. As far as big dollar donors go, John Arnold and his wife, Laura, are not well known to conservatives. CRC respects confidentiality and will not share your e-mail address. As a kid, Arnold's earliest trades included buying hockey cards in Texas and selling them in Canada. She is a graduate of Harvard College, Yale Law School, and has a Master of Philosophy degree in European Studies from the University of Cambridge. (Its also the way politics and charity are meant to be kept separate and distinct, by the way.) Now, with multiple grants from the Arnolds, he is leading an effort to build an open, searchable database that will link all publicly available information on every clinical trial in the world.

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