Louis Bacon

Bacon was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on July 25, 1956. His father, Zachary Bacon Jr., founded real estate company Bacon & Co. and later led Prudential Financial’s and Merrill Lynch’s real estate efforts in North Carolina.[2]

Bacon graduated from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. He attended Middlebury College in Vermont where he received his BA in American literature, graduating in 1979.[2][3] Bacon met Walter Frank while he was working on a fishing boat on Long Island. He was given a job clerking at the specialist firm Walter N. Frank & Co during the summers of his college years.[2] He subsequently received his MBA degree in finance at Columbia Business School in 1981.[2][4]

While at Columbia, Bacon traded commodities using a low interest loan he had received. During the first three semesters, he lost money and was forced to borrow money from his father to pay for necessities. He turned a profit during his fourth semester.[5]

After receiving his MBA, Bacon joined the sales and trading program at Bankers Trust. Later he left the firm and returned to Walter N. Frank & Co. where he traded currencies. Bacon took a job on the floor of the New York Cotton Exchange, working as a "runner".[2] Bacon later worked as a broker and trader of financial futures at Shearson Lehman Brothers and eventually became the senior vice president for their futures trading division.[2][4][6]

In 1987 Bacon founded Remington Trading Partners. His market insights allowed him to profit during the market crash and subsequent rebound.[2] In 1989, Bacon used his middle name when he founded Moore Capital Management LLC; in 1990 he founded Moore Global Investments, using $25,000 inherited from his family.[2]

In 2006, Forbes magazine ranked Bacon as the 746th richest person in the world;[3] in 2011 it ranked him as the 736th richest man.[7] In 2010, the Denver Post reported that Bacon's net worth of $1.6 billion ranked him as the 238th richest American.[8] In March 2010 Forbes Magazine estimated Bacon's net worth to be $1.5 billion, and ranked him as the 655th richest person in the world.[3]

In December 2013, Bacon purchased Taos Ski Valley from the Blake family, who had owned it since 1954.[9]

As of March 2022, Bacon holds a substantial interest in EV startup, Fisker Inc. with Bacon's Moore Capital Management holding 8.45 million Fisker shares.[10]

In 1986 Bacon married Cynthia Pigott,[4] a former Newsweek magazine staff reporter. They divorced in 2002, after having four children together.[5]

In 2007, he married Gabrielle Sacconaghi in Manhattan.[19][20]

In November 2007, Bacon purchased the Trinchera Ranch in Costilla County, Colorado from the Forbes family. The 171,400-acre (694 km²) property sold for $175 million.[21] In 2010, Bacon purchased the Orton Plantation in North Carolina, which was built in 1735 by an ancestor, Roger Moore, son of James Moore.[22]

In 2002 Bacon obtained Austrian citizenship, due to a special provision for figures who have made notable achievements for Austria. The decision was criticised, as no achievement by Bacon on behalf of Austria was documented.[23]

Bacon contributed £500,000 to Britain's Conservative Party between 2010 and 2016.[24] Bacon also served as a fundraiser for American politician Mitt Romney, who was elected governor of Massachusetts and later ran for president.[25] In 2015, Bacon donated $1 million to a Super PAC supporting the presidential candidacy of Jeb Bush.[26]

In 1991, Bacon was 20th on the list of Financial World's Top 100 Wall Street Earners list.[27]

In 1992, Bacon created The Moore Charitable Foundation (MCF) to provide financial support to nonprofit organizations that work to preserve and protect wildlife habitat and improve water systems.[28] Bacon has donated more than one million dollars to the environmental non-profit organization Riverkeeper.[29][30]

In June 2012, United States Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and United States Fish and Wildlife Service Director Daniel M. Ashe announced Bacon intends to donate a conservation easement totaling approximately 90,000 acres in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains bordering the San Luis Valley in Colorado. This easement will provide the founding tract for the proposed new Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area.[31]

Bacon owns the Trinchera Blanca Ranch located in the San Luis Valley. The Trinchera section of the ranch is currently protected by an easement administered by Colorado Open Lands. The new conservation easement Bacon intends to donate is to protect Blanca – thus protecting all 172,000 acres of land.[32]

In addition to his work in Colorado, Bacon has helped preserve and protect environmentally sensitive land in New York, North Carolina, and the Bahamas. His key conservation projects include:

• Robins Island, Long Island, New York: After purchasing the "Jewel of the Peconic" in 1993, Bacon secured the permanent protection of the land through a conservation easement and set about restoring a natural habitat that had been deteriorating for 300 years.[33]
• Cow Neck Farm, Long Island, New York: Bacon's Cow Neck Preserve, LLC purchased the farm in 1998 and donated a 540-acre conservation easement to the Peconic Land Trust, thus preventing development and ensuring the protection of the area's habitat.[34][35]
• Lyford Cay, Bahamas: Bacon is involved with the environmental restoration of Lyford Cay.

In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame.[36]

He is the 2013 recipient of the Audubon Medal, given in recognition of outstanding achievement in the field of conservation and environmental protection.[37] In 2016, Bacon received a Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership's Lifetime Conservation Achievement Award for authorizing conservation easements on more than 210,600 acres in the US.[38]

• Extensive biographical article at Forbes
• News from Financial World magazine
• "Hedge Fund Giant Louis Bacon's Bold Mission To Save The American West," Forbes, October 8, 2012
• How a Neighbors’ Feud in Paradise Launched an International Rape Case