Meet the patrons - The Independent Magazine, 2005

They're the super-rich sophisticates who fund Britain's passions for the arts. But what motivates them to give so much away? And should we worry that so much power now lies in their hands? Michael White investigates.

Meet the patrons

Beside the river in Chelsea, John Studzinski's house runs with quiet efficiency and a brigade of silent staff. A butler glides across the drawing room, adjusting chairs to preordained positions, fanning magazines to a precise aesthetic. Maids tread softly up and down the stairs with folded bedsheets. Gardeners, glimpsed through the window, prune a tree, with nothing but the hum of distant traffic in the background.

It's a picture of discreet wealth. And Studzinski is extremely rich. At 49 he is the chief executive of a large and profitable division of HSBC: the archetypal, arch-sophisticated, anglophile American banker. Unmarried, he has no family responsibilities (although he does have 39 godchildren with no doubt hopeful parents). He lives well and as he chooses.

But what makes him interesting as a human being rather than a Forbes Rich List statistic is that he chooses to give an awful lot of his money away: as things stand, a steady annual distribution of between a half and three-quarters of a million a year pounds sterling.

It's not going to the godchildren although, he says "they'll get the art, eventually". He doesn't believe in what he calls post-mortem philanthropy, insisting that "it's better to give when you're alive, to see what good the money's doing". And he quite sincerely hopes that by the time he's dead there will be nothing left, following the creed of the great 19th century philanthropist Andrew Carnegie that it's a disgrace to die rich. "There's actually a quote along similar lines that I prefer. I think it comes from a quaker tombstone, and it says: 'You have what you gave, you had what you spent, and you lost what you kept'. It's true. In my final hour I'll know that what I've given away will still be there because the projects I've funded, the opportunities I've made available, the talent I've encouraged will hopefully continue. It won't die beside me."

This sounds like the testimony of a man without a child (which, of course, it is) and partly like a man storing his treasure up in heaven (which it is as well). Studzinski is devoutly Catholic. One of the many things he's paid for in the recent past was a Mass setting by the composer Roxanna Panufnik to mark the 75th birthday of the late Cardinal Hume. "It was successful for all concerned. It celebrated Basil's birthday; it helped establish Roxanna's reputation; and it gave me pleasure," he says. "Isn't that what giving is about?"

Studzinski makes the giving business sound straightforward, and historically it was. The rich gave and felt good about it. The deserving gratefully received. And everyone was happy, more or less.

But giving has become more complicated in our own times, steeped in protocols and public scrutiny and questioned motivations. There is a machinery of giving, supervised by money-hunters on the staff of charities, arts organisations and other representatives of the needy who bear the euphemistic title "development officers". There are seminars and study papers about "managing" major donors, as thought they were more a logistical problem than a lucky break. And there are mixed emotions on the part of the recipients, who aren't so easily impressed, or grateful, as they used to be.

The more aggressive claim that private giving merely encourages government (which is better placed to redistribute wealth with fairness) into lethargy. Or that it's a devious tool used by the rich to entrench themselves in public favour and make more. They quote John Steinbeck, who considered philanthropy "another kind of spiritual avarice", practised by "wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their life clawing a fortune out of the guts of society and the last third pushing it back".

And when philanthropists fall from grace there's usually a queue to bite the feeding hand, as was the case the other month when one of the world's most determinedly high-profile arts patrons, Alberto Vilar, was arrested in New York for financial fraud. Reputedly worth $8bn in the late 1990s, he was said to have given away $225m, largely to opera companies and other music organisations who accordingly treated him like royalty and put his name on anything that didn't move. Not least the Vilar Floral Hall and Vilar Young Artists' scheme at Covent Garden. But by the early 2000s his finances were faltering and he began to, as he called it, "reschedule" his gifts. Another word for cancelling. It then turned out that many of his gifts were nothing more than promises, unfulfilled and unenforceable. And when the police caught up with him last May, the knives unsheathed. He was attacked as a self-publicist, a fantasist, a sad inadequate whose cheque book bought the company of glamorous and celebrated people. His name was removed from walls around the world.

When a big player such as Vilar collapses, it sends out seismic shock-waves that the British giving world isn't quite strong enough to deal with. According to Lady (Hilary) Browne-Wilkinson, director of the UK-based Institute for Philanthropy, we don't give nearly enough: certainly not as much as in the US where individual giving amounts to 1.75 per cent of GDP as against our paltry 0.76 per cent.

In America, says Lady B, there has never been an extensive culture of state support, so no one expects it, and there's a strong social obligation to give. In Britain, though, we have the worst of all worlds: state support that is, in real terms, in decline, but a lingering social expectation to the contrary. In a prosperous country where there are more millionaires than teachers, we persistently underestimate our individual net worth, we refuse to talk about it, and a third of us give nothing whatsoever. Loose change, or something like it, accounts for 77 per cent off what is given, and the rich hand out proportionally less than the poor. The top fifth in the wealth league gives less than 1 per cent of its income. The bottom fifth gives 3 per cent.

"This is why we set up the institute," says Lady B, "to consider how to motivate more effective giving, although I can't pretend that our research has come up with a blueprint for achieving it. What you learn from one giver won't necessarily help to encourage the next."

Studzinski talks about his motives with analytical clarity and the coolest of heads. He says it has "nothing to do with social obligation, nor with guilt. This will sound banker-like but we're resource-allocators, all of us, and we have to make decisions about what we do with our assets, our money and our time. I have resources and I use them as an opportunity to be helpful in a certain way. I want to nurture self-esteem and confidence in others, and what I give is focused to that end."

Studzinski's focus is in fact tightly targeted on homelessness, human rights and the arts, with the arts money channelled through his own Genesis Foundation, which supports playwrights, composers, librettists and others involved in creative activity. He doesn't deal in stars or sponsor ready-made productions, "this is about investing in talent not putting on shows", and at its heart is the idea of giving a break to the struggling. "We've all been there," he says, alluding to his own background which was comfortable but not cushioned: his money is self-made. "If no one supports artists then the only artists that exist will come from the upper middle-classes. And what kind of art world would that give you?"

In stark contrast to the laid-back reasoning of Studzinski, Michael and Dianne Bienes are, they say, "just two people who give money to things we like", doing it "by instinct, with emotion, preferably with some fun attached". They're a flamboyant pair: they dress to kill, they like to party, and they're legendarily good hosts, which explains their presence a few Sundays ago at Glyndebourne, hosting a formidably extravagant dinner in the former Green Room.

The Bieneses love Glyndebourne, which is why they write it cheques. They also love the English Chamber Orchestra, with similar results. Dianne and Michael are both on the Board, and in September they are organising an ECO fundraising dinner at Windsor Castle with the Prince of Wales. Tables are £10,000 a piece, if you're free.

Like Studzinski, they're American and self-made. Both accountants, they got lucky on the New York Stock Exchange, retired to Fort Lauderdale, and started to support good causes there, such as hospitals, schools, churches (devout Catholics again). But at the same time they turned into music patrons: "We were simply ticket-buyers who decided to do more than buy the tickets." Initially the money, around $30m given out to date, went to local ventures such as the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra and Florida Grand Opera. But after some issues about the way the beneficiaries were spending it, "We're charitable but we're not stupid," says Michael, ruefully they decided to, in their words, "get out of the box". They liked London (they keep a flat here, behind the Ritz Hotel) so they shifted a large part of their giving to Britain. The Royal Opera and the Donmar Warehouse now get their money too ("We liked the Donmar, so we went to the box office and asked if they were interested"). And as their latest project is a small theatre back in Florida, they're busy brokering transatlantic relationships so that the Donmar and Royal Opera studio shows can tour there.

Ask them why they do all this and Michael will tell you "it gives us a sense of belonging in London. We like people. Through our giving we meet more people that we like." And he might add that when you write large cheques you're never short of friends, not always of the kind you'd choose. "Oh, we can sniff them out," Michael adds, "the hunters. You can't hunt us. We pick and choose."

It's a standard response among the big givers to insist they're not a soft touch and not amenable to approaches. But few take it as far as the engagingly abrupt Sir Peter Moores, whose website tells you up front and in no uncertain terms that general applications for grants are not encouraged and are unlikely to succeed. "You won't find a phone number there either," he says firmly, "the message being: Peter Moores bites. It's a health warning."

Moores, in truth, is more a barker than a biter, but he likes to play the gruffly anti-social old man (actually a well-preserved, well-turned-out 73); and having given away some £39m of his family wealth over the past 40 years, people are usually quite happy to indulge him. "You can put it in your piece that I'm a dreadful interfering old bugger," he tells me, alluding to the notorious fact that he's not the kind of benefactor who writes cheques and quietly disappears. One of his chief interests is supporting young musicians (he's been doing it since the early Fifties when the soprano Joan Sutherland and the conductor Colin Davis were among the first recipients), and he's not above summoning a singer to his presence to tell her what to do with her technique, her demeanour, or her excess weight. "Of course, they rarely take much notice."

Peter Moores is an unusual character whose Eton/Christ Church background isn't obvious from his accent or the rakish snakeskin boots he wears with formal business suits. His father founded Littlewoods: departments stores and football pools. And though that made them rich, they stayed acutely conscious of what Moores calls "our blue-collar origins. After all, my grandmother ran a fish-and-chip shop. It wasn't until I went to Eton that I moved up five social classes in one go."

As a small child, isolated in a large house given over to a business empire, he discovered music: listening to his father's shellac discs. And although he spent some time working for the family firm ("I bought women's underwear, I ran a store, I ended up as chairman") he soon realised that he preferred opera to football, and started spending money on it. "I read somewhere that [the soprano] Kirsten Flagstad said the reason her voice developed so well was because she married a rich man and could afford to take only the work she wanted. So I thought I'd use my money to give young musicians more flexibility. The chance to say no."

When he eventually set up the Peter Moores Foundation in 1964, it was with the unspecific intention to "get things done and open doors", which covers everything from education and sport to social welfare in Barbados (where he keeps a home, in addition to a flat off Whitehall and a pile in Lancashire). But much of the money goes to the arts (including his own museum at Compton Verney, Warwickshire) and, above all, to opera. He pays for the Chandos Records collection of opera in English. He pays for rare bel canto works to be recorded on the Opera Rare label. He pays for stage productions. And he's just committed £15m for a feature film of Mozart's Magic Flute, to be directed by Kenneth Branagh, with English translations by Stephen Fry. "That was a lot to pay in one go, and I hope I won't regret it. But sometimes these sharks come out of the water and bite, and you just have to take it."

Does he often have regrets? Or bite-marks that turned poisonous? "Oh yes. I've helped out people who've become quite odious over time; and when you realise you're giving money to a complete arsehole you stop it, don't you? But I have a constructive memory: I choose to remember only the good things."

Equally accomplished at remembering the good things is a giver who lives very differently to Moores, Studzinski and the Bieneses. Dr David Cohen has no country pile, no Caribbean hideaway. He lives in an attractive but distinctly modest terraced house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, with an upright piano and a boiler that repeatedly breaks down (my visit coincided with the all too regular repair man).

David Cohen is a shy, retiring, and retired, north-London GP. He was much loved by his patients, some of whom were world-celebrity musicians. ("But don't print their names," he pleads, "it's bad form.") And that would be his sole claim to significance but for the fact that he gives away around £350,000 a year through the David Cohen Family Trust mostly to educational and social causes but taking in literature and music. Especially the Cinderella business of new music, where a little money goes a long way and where the name David Cohen has acquired an honourable ubiquity.

"Not that my father, who made the money, liked music very much," says Cohen. "He was for education. But that's because he had no education himself. He was born off Brick Lane in the East End of London and left school at 15 because his father had died and someone had to be the bread-winner."

In the process, though, Cohen Snr taught himself surveying, became a successful property developer and financier, and made a great deal of money that, according to his son, "he didn't by temperament need. He led a spartan life, we didn't even have a car. And when there were family discussions about what to do with it all, the conclusion was the right thing would be to give it away. My father was a religious man, Jewish, and Judaism stands by three things - learning, service, charity - that my father truly believed in. So we set up the trust in 1965 with, I don't know, several million pounds. And it's just gone on."

Paying, among other things, for a large proportion of the new works premiered in UK concert halls. One of the odd things about Dr Cohen, though, is that he doesn't look like someone dedicated to contemporary music - and there is a look, which isn't the jacket, tie and sensible shoes that he tends to adopt. But then, as he admits, "My personal taste is Bach and Viennese classics on the piano. I find new music very difficult, and I struggle with it. But I support it because I love music and this is music's future. There was a time when people struggled with Beethoven, but thankfully for those of us who came after, somebody supported him. That's why I feel I have to do this."

Looking to the future turns up regularly in the explanations of philanthropists. Dianne and Michael Bienes stress that when they home in on a project they are "in it for the long-term. We don't hit and run. We're planting trees for others to enjoy." But it's also a future where the donor's name is expected to be remembered, however much he or she protests to the contrary.

Acknowledgement is very much the thin ice of the giving business: hard to judge and to negotiate to everybody's satisfaction. Moores is emphatic: "I don't expect gratitude. I don't want free seats, I don't want free drinks." And Studzinski claims relative indifference to the success or failure of the people he supports: "I don't want to be feted: I'm backing talent not racehorses." But as Michael Bienes puts it, "Everyone wants acknowledgement, whatever they say. If you don't believe me, go to the cemetery and take a look."

Pre-payment schmoozing, on the other hand, is agreed to be a wasted effort and a potential irritant. "I don't want people stroking my arm," says Bienes, "it feels like a set-up." And Moores has a rule "never to break bread with someone you might give money to until after you've handed over the cash. It saves a lot of time."

The problem is, of course, that when you're known to be a serious giver you're pursued with smiles and soap, relentlessly. The invitations flow. You get defensive about friendships.

"I take a fairly straightforward view of myself," says Moores, "and I know exactly who my friends are, who really likes me - which is why I write a lot of letters saying, 'No, I'm not coming to your gala dinner.' And why I bin letters from long-lost friends who want to re-establish contact. They're usually after money for a scout hut."
Studzinski does the same but with more elegance. He has his secretary sound out the reason for the invitation, "which you may find comic or snobby, but I prefer to know in advance if it's my charming personality or my cheque book that the host is after."

The truth is, it's neither comic nor snobby: it's practical. And for all his bankerly sophistication, Studzinski is the most practical of philanthropists in that he gives not only money but time. Until recently he could be found most Saturday nights cooking meals for the homeless in a London shelter. He probably spends little time using the pots and pans in his own kitchen. That's what the staff are for.

He still spends evenings at the shelter, not to cook but to do other chores. He makes it a priority. And it exposes him to people that he wouldn't find at gala dinners, though their expectations of him may be similar.

I wondered, does he give loose change to beggars?

"No, I give them lectures. I find out about them, ask them why they're on the streets, what kind of help they need. And I take time to listen to them. That's important, more than money. Money's fine. But there are problems that it doesn't touch."