Thomas Kaplan: Billionaire obsessed by gold and big cats

Commodities magnate and Oxford historian Thomas Kaplan, who has staked most of his fortune on the ongoing gold rush, believes the bull market has barely started.

Earlier this year, two of the world's biggest investors, George Soros and John Paulson, piled into a company with next to no revenues, and which had lost $352m in three years, says Forbes. Why did they bet a combined $175m on a Vancouver miner with an unimpressive history? They were following Thomas Kaplan, a little-known billionaire, renowned for his obsession with big cats. He is also becoming Wall Street's most prominent "bull of bullion".

A commodities magnate, with an Oxford doctorate in British colonial history, Kaplan, 47, has staked most of his fortune on the ongoing gold rush. His Tigris fund now has $2bn invested globally, says The Wall Street Journal. With a history of winning on big, bold bets, Kaplan is an unabashed gold evangelist. "We haven't yet begun the real bull market," he says. The fundamentals suggest a sustained surge (see below). "Not since BusinessWeek proclaimed the 'Death of Equities' in August 1979 has such a bell been rung."

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