James Tomilson "Tom" Hill III (born May 24, 1948) is an American

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...

hedge fund manager, the former president and CEO of Blackstone Alternative Asset Management (BAAM),

Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate b ...

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as sho ...

s business.

Early life and education

Hill was born in New York and attended The Buckley School and

Milton Academy Milton Academy (also known as Milton) is a highly selective, coeducational, independent preparatory, boarding and day school in Milton, Massachusetts consisting of a grade 9–12 Upper School and a grade K–8 Lower School. Boarding is offered ...

, where he was a varsity wrestler. Hill received his

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

, ''

cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'', from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

, where he wrote for ''

The Harvard Lampoon ''The Harvard Lampoon'' is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Overview The ''Harvard Lampoon'' publication was founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates ...

'' and studied history, literature, and Japanese studies. He received his

M.B.A. A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

from

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

Career

Hill started his career at

First Boston : ''For the company after its acquisition by Credit Suisse, see Credit Suisse First Boston (known as CSFB and CS First Boston)'' The First Boston Corporation was a New York-based bulge bracket investment bank, founded in 1932 and acquired by Cr ...

in 1973, where he was one of the founding principals of its

mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

department, and then moved to

Smith Barney Morgan Stanley Wealth Management is an American multinational financial services corporation specializing in retail brokerage. It is the wealth & asset management division of Morgan Stanley. On January 13, 2009, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup anno ...

, where he served as the head of its mergers and acquisitions department. In 1982, he joined

Lehman Brothers Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ( ) was an American global financial services firm founded in 1847. Before Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States (behind Gol ...

as a partner in its M&A department and later became head of M&A, head of Investment Banking and co-CEO. Filmmaker

Oliver Stone William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of '' Midnight Express'' (1978), and wrote the gangster film remake '' Sc ...

used J. Tomilson Hill as one of several inspirations for the character

Gordon Gekko Gordon Gekko is a composite character in the 1987 film '' Wall Street'' and its 2010 sequel '' Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'', both directed by Oliver Stone. Gekko was portrayed by actor Michael Douglas, whose performance in the first fil ...

, portrayed by

Michael Douglas Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AF ...

in the 1987 movie,

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

. While at Lehman, Hill participated in the multi-sided takeover battle for control of RJR Nabisco in 1988, the largest

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loan ...

in history up to that time, and a seminal event in the history of

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

Barbarians at the Gate ''Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco'' is a 1989 book about the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco, written by investigative journalism, investigative journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. The book is based upon a series of ...

, the best-selling book chronicling that saga, described Hill as “an oiled-back

haircut atop 5 feet, 10 inches of icy Protestant reserve.” In 1993 Hill joined Blackstone, where he served as co-head of the corporate mergers and acquisitions advisory group. In 2007, he became vice chairman of the firm. Since 2000, he has served as president and chief executive of Blackstone's hedge fund business, Blackstone Alternative Asset Management (BAAM), and has grown that business's assets under management from $1.3 billion in 2000 to $56 billion as of December 31, 2013. BAAM is currently the world's largest discretionary allocator to hedge funds, with investors including mostly corporate and public

pension fund A pension fund, also known as a superannuation fund in some countries, is any plan, fund, or scheme which provides retirement income. Pension funds typically have large amounts of money to invest and are the major investors in listed and priva ...

sovereign wealth fund A sovereign wealth fund (SWF), sovereign investment fund, or social wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund that invests in real and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, or in alternative investments such ...

s and

central bank A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a country or monetary union, and oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central ba ...

s. The business's growth from 2007 to 2013, at a time when the industry generally contracted substantially, was featured in a June 2013 ''

Harvard Business Review ''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. ''HBR'' is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, Massach ...

'' case study. Hill has appeared at the 2014

Credit Suisse Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world and is one of the nine global " ...

Financial Services Forum, the 2011

Milken Institute The Milken Institute is an independent economic think tank based in Santa Monica, California with offices in Washington, DC, New York, Miami, London, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore. It publishes research and hosts conferences that apply market-based p ...

Global Conference, and the 2012

Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and ma ...

Hedge Fund Summit, among others. In 2014, Hill was inducted into ''Institutional Investor's Alphas "Hedge Fund Hall of Fame". In the spring of 2021, it was announce that Hill would become chairman of private investments at

Two Sigma Two Sigma Investments is a New York City-based hedge fund that uses a variety of technological methods, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and distributed computing, for its trading strategies. The firm is run by John Overdec ...

, a 'quant' hedge fund with $58 billion in assets under management.

Philanthropy

Hill is the chairman of

Lincoln Center Theater The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a Broadway theater in the Lincoln Center complex at 150 West 65th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Operated by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), the Beaumont is the only Broad ...

and has served as chairman of the Smithsonian's

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

. He serves on the board of directors of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, mi ...

, the Telluride Foundation, the Advantage Testing Foundation, and Our Lady Queen of Angels School, a Catholic school in East Harlem that is part of the Partnership for Inner-City Education school network. In 2014, the

Frick Collection The Frick Collection is an art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection (normally at the Henry Clay Frick House, currently at the 945 Madison Avenue#2021–present: Frick Madison, Frick Madison) features Old Master paintings and Europe ...

presented "Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection", a group of thirty-three statuettes from Hill's personal collection that date from the mid-fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In 2017, Hill opened the Hill Art Foundation a gallery on West 24th Street in

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

to exhibit his private collection to the public in 2019.

Personal life

Hill lives in Manhattan with his wife, Saint Louis native Janine W. Hill, who serves as director of fellowship affairs and studies strategic planning at the

. They have two daughters: Margot Langdon Hill Kirby and Astrid Hill Dattilo. In 2004, Hill sold

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, link=no, lv, Markuss Rotkovičs, link=no; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latv ...

's ''No. 6 (Yellow, White, Blue Over Yellow on Gray)'' (1954) for $17.3 million at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

, a record for the artist.Carol Vogel (November 10, 2004)
Contemporary Art Shows Its Strength in a $93 Million Sale
''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''.

References

External links