Bruce Kovner

Bruce Stanley Kovner (born February 1945) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is chairman of CAM Capital, which he established in January 2012 to manage his investment, trading and business activities. From 1983 through 2011, Kovner was founder and chairman of Caxton Associates, a diversified trading company. As of April 2024, his net worth was estimated at US$7.7 billion.

Kovner is chairman of the Juilliard School and was vice chairman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He is on the boards of the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center , and American Enterprise Institute.

Early life Bruce Stanley Kovner was born in February 1945 in New York City's Brooklyn borough to Jewish parents Isidore Kovner, an engineer who briefly played semi-professional football, and his wife, Sophie. Kovner spent his early years in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn with his parents and three siblings before the family relocated to suburban Los Angeles in 1953. Early on, he was a high achiever, becoming a Merit Scholar. He was the student-body president of Van Nuys High School at 16, and an accomplished basketball player

Kovner went to Harvard College starting in 1962, a time marred by the hanging suicide of his mother back in his family's Van Nuys home in 1965. He later claimed that this first, nerve-racking trade taught him the importance of risk management.

In his eventual role as a trader under Michael Marcus at Commodities Corporation (now part of Goldman Sachs), he purportedly made millions and gained widespread respect as an objective and sober trader.

In September 2011, Kovner announced his retirement from his position as CEO at Caxton, succeeded by Andrew Law.

Kovner established CAM Capital in January 2012 to manage his investment, trading, and business activities.

A long-time supporter of The Juilliard School, Kovner has been chairman of the School's board since 2001. In 2013 Bruce and his wife, Suzie Kovner, endowed the Kovner Fellowship Program at Juilliard with a gift of $60 million - the largest one-time gift to the school. In 2012 Kovner donated $20 million to Juilliard to endow the school's graduate program in historical performance. Kovner also donated a collection of music manuscripts to Juilliard in 2006.

Kovner has contributed extensively to conservative causes. In January 2012 he donated around $500,000 to Restore our Future, a Super PAC supporting the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. He is the former chairman of the board of trustees of the American Enterprise Institute. His close acquaintances have included former Vice President Dick Cheney, The paper was criticized in The Guardian since the majority of organizations in the study have multiple focuses, and Brulle could not say what portion of money (if any) was devoted to climate issues.

Other philanthropic causes he has supported include the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that focuses on school choice; the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, which help serve wrongly-convicted inmates, and Lambda Legal, which advocates for equality and civil rights for the LGBTQ community.

Personal life Kovner has three children—including Rachel Kovner, a federal district judge in Brooklyn—and has been married twice.

His Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City, the Willard D. Straight House, features a lead-lined room to protect against a chemical, biological, or dirty bomb attack.

Kovner is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received an honorary doctorate from The Juilliard School. In 2016 he was awarded the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership by the Philanthropy Roundtable and the Alexander Hamilton Award by the Manhattan Institute.