Michael Hintze was named 2008 Australian of the Year in the UK in recognition of his extraordinary global business success and philanthropy. He is an inspirational role model for the Australian and British communities.

Hintze holds a BSc in Physics and Pure Mathematics and a BEng in Electrical Engineering both from the University of Sydney. He started his career in the Australian Army, in the Royal Australian Electrical Marine Engineers, before moving to the US to embark upon a career in finance. He then moved to London with Credit Suisse First Boston before becoming Head of Equity Trading at Goldman Sachs. In 1999 he launched his own hedge fund company, CQS. He is a trustee of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for the Built Environment. Hintze has significant and wide-ranging philanthropic interests, establishing the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation with his wife Dorothy in 2004. The fund has helped to finance two galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, established the chair of International Security at the University of Sydney and provided vital funding to the Old Vic Theatre in London. In 2005 Pope Benedict XVI made Hintze a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory after he contributed to the restoration of Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Vatican’s Pauline Chapel.