Jimmy Chan was a Prince Philip Scholar and read Engineering at Downing College, Cambridge. He graduated with First Class Honours and was awarded the Institute of Civil Engineers Prize for Management Studies by the Engineering Department. He then pursued a PhD in Management at the predecessor of Judge Business School, funded by a Cambridge Shell Scholarship.
Following his doctorate, Jimmy left academia to join Mr Allan Gray at Orbis Investments in 1992 as a Quantitative Investment Analyst. He qualified as a Chartered Financial Analyst in 1995 and was appointed a Director of Orbis Investment Advisory Limited in 1997. From 2002 to 2016, he was Chief Operating Officer and head of Orbis in the UK.
As part of the senior management team, Jimmy worked closely with the founders in growing Orbis from 15 people in 1992 into a global firm of about 400 employees in 8 countries in 2018, with an industry-leading long-term investment performance track record and $38 billion of assets under management. Since leaving his full-time employment at Orbis, Jimmy has been working at Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropy to set up its philanthropic initiatives.