Masroor Siddiqui is not someone who seeks the limelight. 

The 51-year-old’s lucrative career in finance, which has included stints at Goldman Sachs and Sir Chris Hohn’s hedge fund, has largely flown under the radar with little fanfare.

Yet Mr Siddiqui has quietly gained influence as a trusted adviser to powerful men, notably as the lead director of the board at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, where he works closely with the nonagenarian media mogul.

Over the years, he is also understood to have become a close confidante and mentor of another one-time financier: Rishi Sunak.

The two men are understood to be firm friends. They talk regularly, even after the Prime Minister entered the ranks of the Government and rose to the very top.

Career path

They shared a similar career path before Mr Sunak veered from the City to Westminster. Mr Siddiqui is eight years Mr Sunak’s senior and started at Goldman Sachs several years before the future Tory MP joined the Wall Street giant’s London office. 

He is understood to have been somewhat of a mentor to Mr Sunak at the bank. They crossed paths again a number of years later at the Children’s Investment Fund (TCI), the famously media-shy hedge fund based in Mayfair.

Mr Siddiqui, who holds dual American and British citizenship, according to Companies House filings, studied in the United States. 

He obtained a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in systems engineering and a Master’s degree in management from Yale University in the 1990s.

At TCI, Mr Siddiqui – known as “Mas” to his friends – was regarded as Sir Chris’s right-hand man. 

The highly private investor, who set up TCI in 2003, is the son of a Jamaican car mechanic who emigrated to Britain in 1960. The fund is known for donating large sums to charity.

After leaving TCI in 2011, Mr Siddiqui co-founded his own hedge fund, Naya Capital Management. 

The firm has made some high-profile investments, including pumping €100 million (£86 million) into European ride-hailing app Bolt in 2020.

Other business decisions have proven more controversial, however. 

In 2017, Naya was one of several hedge funds that “shorted” Carillion, the outsourcing giant that was one of the Government’s biggest contractors before it imploded in early 2018 under £7 billion of debt.

Short-selling is a strategy commonly deployed by hedge funds. It occurs when traders borrow shares whose price seems likely to fall, selling them, and then waiting for the price to drop before buying it back. The trader then pockets the difference.

Reports at the time said that Mr Siddiqui’s firm made £7.6 million from betting against Carillion. In 2018, Labour politicians branded Theresa May a “total hypocrite” for accepting a £50,000 donation from Naya to the Conservative Party after it profited from the outsourcer’s demise.

Internal strife

Mr Siddiqui has also faced internal strife within Naya. 

In 2014, Bruce Emery, the firm’s co-founder who also previously worked at TCI, sued Mr Siddiqui in London’s High Court, alleging that he tried to force him out of the hedge fund.

In court documents, Mr Emery’s lawyers claimed that Mr Siddiqui and Naya “acted wrongfully” by “purporting to remove Mr Emery” from the partnership.

It is unclear how the legal case concluded. Naya was contacted for comment regarding the lawsuit. 

Around the same time, Mr Siddiqui was impressing at Murdoch’s News Corp. 

He joined the board of directors in 2013, rising to become its lead director and chairman of its audit committee.

Mr Siddiqui may also have played a role in encouraging Mr Sunak to attend The Times CEO summit in June, which was regarded as a coup for News UK considering that Boris Johnson never attended the annual event during his premiership.

Mr Murdoch was sitting in the front row as the Prime Minister spoke at the summit. That evening, he attended Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s annual party at Spencer House, alongside other politicians including Sir Keir Starmer.

A News UK spokesman said Mr Siddiqui declined to comment.

Away from boardrooms and Naya’s headquarters near Hyde Park, Mr Siddiqui is known to be a cricket fan in his spare time. He has sat on the England and Wales Cricket Board’s South Asian advisory group, which aimed to boost diversity and participation within these communities.

Meanwhile, he has been involved in a number of charitable organisations, including BRAC UK, a non-profit organisation that focuses on tackling poverty, and the Kidney Centre Karachi. 

He also played a role in establishing a new ward at the Shaukat Khanum Trust Cancer Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan.

In a rare example of Mr Siddiqui rubbing shoulders with celebrities, the private financier was photographed alongside Jemima Goldsmith, a screenwriter and Imran Khan’s ex-wife, at a charity dinner at the Michelin-starred Benares Restaurant in Mayfair. It was in aid of Unicef’s Pakistan Floods Appeal. British DJ Naughty Boy was also in attendance.

Mr Sunak is known to have a number of close confidantes who he can rely on for advice. 

Last year, he brought his close friend and former journalist James Forsyth into the Downing Street fold. 

He also hired Richard Sharp, his former boss as Goldman, as an adviser at the Treasury during the Covid pandemic.

Mr Siddiqui might not have any formal role in providing counsel to the current Prime Minister, but he is understood to be a trusted member of Mr Sunak’s unofficial cadre of mentors.