Billionaire Kenneth Dart, the reclusive, Cayman Islands-based heir to his family’s eponymous plastic-cup fortune, made $US4 billion ($6.1 billion) from a contrarian bet on Big Tobacco. Now, he’s turned his attention to another vice.
Since April, the 70-year-old investor has unloaded billions in tobacco stocks and bought a major stake in sportsbook operator Flutter Entertainment. That complements a position in Swedish online casino firm Evolution AB that he began building last year, currently worth about $US2.9 billion.
Dart, whose father and grandfather first developed the technology to mass-produce foam cups, relinquished his American citizenship in 1994.
“Sin stocks — they’re the stocks everyone’s supposed to hate, but they’re also the stocks everyone’s addicted to,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kenneth Shea said in an interview. “It’s almost the opposite of the AI trade. They’re recession-proof.”
Dart, who’s so seldom seen that there are few photos of him publicly available, made wagers on UK-based cigarette makers British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands that proved to be shrewd. From 2020 to 2024, he spent about $US8.4 billion buying a position in then-laggard BAT through his holding company Spring Mountain Investments, according to a Bloomberg News analysis.
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BAT shares performed poorly during the administration of former US President Joe Biden, who pushed to prohibit the sale of menthol-flavoured cigarettes, Shea said.
“If they outlawed menthol, it would have clobbered the stock,” Shea said. “I can fully understand why he’d take a bet on BAT, particularly after Trump got elected.”
The value of Dart’s remaining stake in BAT has climbed to about $US3.6 billion as the company’s shares have risen to the highest since 2018. And that’s after he already sold $US7.7 billion of stock, including nearly $US5.7 billion since April 30 alone.
Imperial Brands’ shares have risen about 120 per cent since Dart first disclosed a stake in 2021. Those gains helped push his net worth to $US13.7 billion from about $US6.6 billion in May 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
