The Children's Investment Fund is facing a loss of about $93m (€73m) in its protracted campaign against JPower after the Japanese utility agreed to purchase the activist's shareholding, marking a setback for Christopher Hohn, whose hedge fund has lost about a quarter of its value this year.

TCI requested on September 29 that JPower buy the fund's stake back, exercising a right that Japanese corporate law bestowed on it as a dissenter to a corporate reorganisation JPower proposed on July 31. TCI had objected to JPower's plan to bring within the JPower group a subsidiary involved in coal mining and freighting.