Richard Driehaus

Richard Herman Driehaus (July 28, 1942 – March 9, 2021) was an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist.

He was the founder, chief investment officer, and chairman of the hedge fund, Driehaus Capital Management LLC, based in Chicago.

The philanthropic activities of the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Charitable Trust are widely acknowledged in the fields of culture, arts, heritage protection, journalism and architecture, including the renowned global Driehaus Architecture Prize for new classical architecture.

He attended high school at St. Ignatius College Prep and received his undergraduate (1965) and master's (1970) degrees in business from DePaul University.

From 1968 through 1973, Driehaus developed research ideas for the institutional trading department at A.G. Becker & Co. In 1973, he became director of research for Mullaney, Wells & Co. In 1976, he became director of research and a money manager for Jesup & Lamont.

In 1979, he set up Driehaus Securities, a research broker that provided ideas to a select group of accounts, followed by Driehaus Securities LLC in 1980.

This strategy reportedly delivered compound annual returns of 30% for Driehaus Capital Management in the 12 years after it was set up in the 1980s.

Driehaus was born in Chicago.

He founded Driehaus Capital Management LLC in 1982 and until his death was the current chief investment officer and chairman.

He and Kristyna (Pellouchoud), an architectural student, met in Prague and married in 1995.

The couple had two daughters.

He later founded Driehaus Mutual Funds in 1996, and Driehaus Capital Management (USVI) LLC in 1997.

Driehaus explained that "the momentum investor has confidence that a stock that is high can head even higher. We rarely invest in stock because it's cheap and hope for a turnaround."

Preoccupied with his career, Driehaus married in his early fifties.

His two marriages ended in divorce.

In 2000, he was named in Barron's "All-Century" team of the 25 individuals who have been the most influential within the mutual fund industry over the past 100 years.

His firm had $13.2 billion in assets under management as of March 2021.

He is often credited as the father of momentum investing, as he popularized the investment strategy which called for spotting stocks on prolonged upward trends.

He contributed an equivalent of $92 million in 2000's dollars from 1984 until 1987 already; and his foundations kept donating ever since.

Driehaus often pointed to his Roman Catholic roots as a guide to his philanthropic endeavors.

Driehaus said, “You have to continue to learn your whole life, you have to be responsible for your own actions, and you have to give something back to society.”

He has said that his original plan was to give away only $100 million during his lifetime, but believed that he will end up parting with more than twice that amount.

He also received an honorary doctorate degree from DePaul in 2002.

The Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture (short: Driehaus Architecture Prize) was established in 2003 and doubled to $200,000 in 2008.

It is presented annually through the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture to honor a major contributor in the field of traditional and New Classical architecture.

The first American to win the prize was Allan Greenberg in 2006, who redesigned the interior of more than 30 rooms of the U.S. Department of State.

The Driehaus Prize is typically awarded around the same time, has similar terms, are both commemorated by a bronze award (the Pritzker is a medal and the Driehaus is a miniature Choragic Monument of Lysicrates), and, until 2008, both were the same monetary prize amount.

The first recipient of the Driehaus Prize was Léon Krier, who helped lay the theoretical framework for New Urbanism and designed the Prince of Wales' model town of Poundbury in England.

In 2010 Richard Driehaus married Inese Romanovska, of Latvia.

Driehaus died at age 78 on March 9, 2021, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

He had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage the night before at his home.

A private mass was held for him after his funeral.

He was survived by his three daughters Tereza, Caroline, and Katherine (Kate) Driehaus.

In his 2012 interview with architect and urbanist Michael Lykoudis, Driehaus gives his inspiration for establishing the prize: "I believe architecture should be of human scale, representational form, and individual expression that reflects a community's architectural heritage. There is a delight, proportion, and harmony in classical architecture that I wasn’t finding in the contemporary buildings coming up around me in Chicago."

The Driehaus Prize is often compared to the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which typically encourages modern design.

“The prize [...] represents a partial counterbalance to the rejection of classical forms by elite architecture that prevailed for much of the last century,” notes James Panero, an American culture critic.

The award has been given to architects associated with postmodernism, such as Michael Graves (2012) and David M. Schwarz (2015).

Driehaus received the 2015 American Institute of Architects Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to architecture in Chicago and worldwide.

Driehaus was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State’s highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2017.

Driehaus has given widely both individually and through the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Richard H. Driehaus Charitable Trust.