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ARPAD BUSSON was 10 minutes late. As the 44-year-old financier (who is also actress Uma Thurman’s boyfriend) hobbled through the door of his Mayfair boardroom, it became apparent why.

“I’ve done my back in,” said Busson, in a hoarse French accent. The injury is an old one acquired on the ski slopes.

Born in France and educated “between France and Switzerland”, Busson skied as soon as he could walk. At the age of 13 he begged his mother to let him go professional — in downhill racing — but she wouldn’t allow it.

“I’m happy that I didn’t go professional,” he said, shifting his weight from one side to the other, trying to get comfortable.

Back pain is not the only problem for Busson, known to his friends as “Arki”. In a few weeks he will host the annual Ark gala dinner.

Absolute Return for Kids is the charitable foundation he set up six years ago for underprivileged children around the world and has raised about £60m. Its annual dinner has become a showcase event, attracting stars from Busson’s Hollywood contacts book and London’s wealthy hedge-fund community.

Last year, the event raised £27m. With the credit crisis having brought much of the industry back to earth, it is doubtful this year’s dinner at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich will match that total. In fact, this year’s invitation acknowledges these are “difficult times”.

Yet Busson is undeterred: “You always dream. Last year I hoped we would do £20m and this year I hope we do £15m.”

A Fiat 500 decorated by the artist Tracey Emin is expected to be the top auction lot at this year’s event, where in the past wealthy guests have paid £70,000 for a yoga session with Sting.

Other trinkets, including a pair of diamond earrings donated by the jeweller Graff, and an opportunity to name a 100-carat pear-shaped diamond, will also be auctioned to guests.

Busson may be best known for Ark, but he is still the hands-on chairman of EIM, his hedge-funds business.

He also has a high-profile private life, but he does not like to talk about that. As a result, a number of myths about him circulate on the internet. For the record, he says he did not make “his first profit” selling toothpicks door-to-door. Nor did he masquerade as an Italian prince on the French Rivièra, though he did date former Charlie’s Angel Farrah Fawcett.

His relationship with Thurman, the star of films such as Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, followed eight years with the Australian supermodel Elle Macpherson, with whom he has two sons, Cy and Flynn.

Celebrity does not faze him. The only son of Pascal Busson and Florence “Flockie” Harcourt-Smith, he was raised with a taste for glamour — princesses and maharajahs moved in the family’s social circle.

His father was a stockbroker at JP Morgan in New York in the 1960s and ended up as European head of Lehman Brothers.

Unsure what he wanted to do, Busson studied economics and history at the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland and then did his national service in the French army where he trained as a nurse. He describes the time in the army as one of the best in his life and would have served for longer were it not for the fact that he missed the enrolment deadline to go to Lebanon.

These days his PA, Steph — formerly Mick Jagger’s assistant — organises his life. Time is split between running EIM, fundraising for Ark (helped by a board of trustees including Stanley Fink of Man Group and Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace) and managing his personal life.

The results are often chaotic — a one-day trip to France to meet investors last Wednesday was followed by a flight to New York on Thursday afternoon — but he keeps going. And in many ways what he does for EIM mirrors what he does for Ark: convincing very wealthy people to part with large sums of money.

His knack for selling was discovered by market veteran Paul Tudor Jones who mandated the young Busson to raise funds for him in the 1980s.

When Tudor Jones’s fund, Tudor Investments, generated a huge return for investors after the 1987 stock-market crash, Busson’s reputation was sealed and other money managers sought out his services. They included Louis Bacon, Julian Robertson and Paul Marshall.

He started EIM in 1992 and today it has $14 billion (£7 billion) under management from a base of institutional investors.

His famous charm, however, makes little difference in a volatile economy, and the fund was down 2%-3% for the first quarter. Relative to the overall market this performance was respectable, but Busson is far from complacent.

“We were lucky not to have any blow-ups in the first quarter and a lot of that was down to the analysis we did.

“We acted early. Last June we started to get out where we did not have comfortable clarity. You have to manage counter-party risk and if we thought the investor base was shaky or if we thought the manager had very big balance sheets we sold out.”

Hints of a cultivated personality dot EIM’s office in London’s Mayfair, and the six, elastic-beaded bracelets on his wrists suggest a side to him that is more hippy missionary than money manager.

His sermon on philanthropy goes like this: “Money is like anything — if you abuse it, you lose it. You need to respect the money because as it comes, it goes.

“I’m incredibly grateful that I have been lucky to make a little bit of money [he’s worth about £200m] but I think one of the ways to keep this money is to give it out.”

The money raised by Ark goes to treating Aids victims in Africa, taking children out of care in Romania and Bulgaria and developing educational academies for disadvantaged children in Britain and India.

Each of Ark’s 13 trustees is given a specific area to look after, and much of Busson’s time has been devoted to taking children out of institutional care and placing them in better homes.

The foundation’s success — it has taken 1,500 youngsters out of care in Romania — has not diminished the horror he felt on first visiting the orphanages. “Some of these kids had never, ever been fed solids. They had been told that the solids would rip their stomachs out.

“They were so skinny. You know, having children [of my own], it’s very difficult, just getting these images back in my mind . . .

“In one institution we found about 40 kids. They were barely dressed and you could see their bones everywhere. The closest images that came to my mind were concentration camps.”

Busson cited the American investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett as the person he most admires in business. But will he, like Buffett, give everything away in the end?

“That will be a component of it — absolutely,” said Busson.

“I have two sons and let’s see what they are capable of doing. Maybe they will go into business or art or maybe they will decide to become missionaries and help other people.”

There is little doubt which their father would prefer they chose.

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