There are many reasons to heed Sir Michael Hintze; the fact that he’s a billionaire is only one.

At 64, Hintze has lived several lives. He was an officer in the Australian Army and an electrical engineer, and now manages CQS, a $15.3bn London-based hedge fund firm that he founded in 1999. The firm has performed admirably through multiple market dust-ups, and famously weathered the 2008 market wipe-out with a 72.8% return in its asset-backed securities fund.