By voting with their feet they have created a boom at the hedge fund haunts such as Quaglinos and

By voting with their feet they have created a boom at the “hedge fund haunts”, such as Quaglinos and Petrus in Mayfair, and Che and Just on St James’s Street.Stephen Georgiadis, managing director of the investment company Altium Capital in St James’s Square, said: “Companies felt obliged to be in or near the Square Mile because if they were raising capital they felt they need to be near the source.”That is less the case as you can communicate remotely now. Besides it is more human and civilised here compared to the buildings in the City, which are silos for lost souls.”The Economist says that St James’s, otherwise renowned for its antiquated gentlemen’s clubs, has become “the undisputed home” of the European hedge fund, a high-risk investment famously exploited by George Soros that gambles on stock and currency fluctuations with a typical stake of £100,000-£500,000.Clustered in one of the capital’s most expensive areas, the companies include such prestigious names as Soros, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts,Blackstone and the lesser-known Camomile, TT and Zebedee. Researchers from The Economist estimate that together they manage funds of about $150bn (£95bn). The 154-year-old investment bank Lazard will strike a further blow for the area when it relocates to offices for 450 staff near Green Park after 30 years at Moorgate in the City.A spokeswoman for Lazard said: “Some of the historical reasons for our being in the City are no longer valid and we feel we can serve our clients better through moving west.”The Economist’s report concluded: “For the family man the area is convenient for London’s most expensive family houses in Holland Park and Notting Hill Gate The shops, restaurants and bars are good. And the hedge funds don’t need to worry about being close to the City to shorten their journey times to meetings. These days they manage so much money that the City boys come to see them.”A spokesman for the Corporation of London, the local authority overseeing the City, said: “The financial sector has outgrown the rest of the economy to such an extent that there was never any chance of containing it within the Square Mile.”If you are dealing with a small number of wealthy people rather than dealing with businesses from all over the world, then the West End is a good place to be for a more sedate business environment.”. John Paul Paul Getty Jr lived several lives, all of them eye-catching, all of them enigmatic, all of them tinged with the self-destructive madness that only the world’s super-rich can inflict on themselves.

The oil tycoon’s son, who died yesterday at the age of 70, made an extraordinary and often painful transition from long-haired, drugged-out hippy to inveterate Anglophile and philanthropic country squire. John Paul Getty Jr lived several lives, all of them eye-catching, all of them enigmatic, all of them tinged with the self-destructive madness that only the world’s super-rich can inflict on themselves. But unlike other children of famous fathers who struggled with the burden of their birthright and ended up drugged out, dissolute or prematurely dead, he managed to beat back his demons to become a generous patron of the arts and several unlikely and unfashionable causes.He gave to the National Gallery, to the British Film Institute, to Lord’s and the Marylebone Cricket Club. He took pity on the Conservative Party after its ringing defeats of 1997 and 2001. But he also made more discreet donations to more progressive social causes, most famously the families of striking miners during the 1984 stand-off between Arthur Scargill and Margaret Thatcher.In his later years, he was celebrated for hobnobbing with Tory grandees, having a replica of the Oval cricket ground built on his 300-acre Buckinghamshire estate and hankering after a halcyon vision of rural England that had long since vanished, if it existed at all. Being granted British citizenship and giving up his US passport in 1997 was one of the proudest moments of his life.All this was a long way from the chequered progress of his early years: the loving son who tried and failed to please his tyrannical father, the party addict who hung out with rock stars and glamorous women until alcohol and heroin proved their undoing, and the absentee parent who had to beg for the life of his eldest son after his kidnap by Calabrian gangsters.For years, Sir Paul was a virtual recluse, battling the health consequences of his addictions at his London home in Cheyne Walk, and, later on, behind the walls of his Wormsley Park estate.

But slowly he turned himself round, undergoing a series of conversions. With the help of his third wife, Victoria Holdsworth, he became a practising Catholic. Through his friend and Chelsea neighbour Mick Jagger he developed a passion for cricket. And, after the death of his grandmother in 1984, he gained access to his first serious chunk of the family fortune and decided it was his mission in life to give it to those who needed it more than he did. Asked to describe his occupation, he would always answer “philanthropist”.Throughout his life, his defining relationship was with his father, the distant, notoriously miserly John Paul Getty, who built his empire on “Oklahoma crude” and bought his way first into European high society and then into the highest echelons of fine art collection.The younger Getty was actually born Eugene Paul, but changed his name to John Paul out of admiration for his father. (He later went by just plain Paul.) Both his parents went on to other marriages, however, and largely vanished from his life.