Charles Koch
Charles de Ganahl Koch is an American businessman, engineer, and philanthropist. As of May 2025, he is ranked as the 22nd richest man in the world on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with an estimated net worth of US$71.4 billion. Koch has been co-owner, chairman, and chief executive officer of Koch Industries since 1967, while his late brother David Koch served as executive vice president. Charles and David each owned 42% of the conglomerate. The brothers inherited the business from their father, Fred C. Koch, then expanded the business. Koch Industries is the largest privately held company by revenue in the United States, according to Forbes.
Koch also supports a number of libertarian think tanks, including the Institute for Humane Studies, the Cato Institute, the Ayn Rand Institute, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He also contributes to the Republican Party and candidates, libertarian groups, and various charitable and cultural institutions. He co-founded the Washington, D.C.–based Cato Institute. Along with his brother, Koch has been an important funder of think tanks that lobby to oppose environmental regulation. Koch has published four books detailing his business philosophy, Market Based Management, The Science of Success, Good Profit, and Believe in People.
Early life and education
Koch was born and lives in Wichita, Kansas, one of four sons of Clementine Mary and Fred Chase Koch. Koch's grandfather, Harry Koch, was a Dutch immigrant who settled in West Texas, founded the Quanah Tribune-Chief newspaper, and was a founding shareholder of Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railway. Among his maternal great-great-grandparents were William Ingraham Kip, an Episcopal bishop, and Elizabeth Clementine Stedman, a writer.In an interview with Warren Cassell Jr., which was recorded in February 2016, Koch said that as a child he did not live a privileged lifestyle despite growing up in a wealthy family. Koch said, "My father wanted me to work as if I was the poorest person in the world." After attending several private high schools, Koch was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He received a Bachelor of Science in general engineering in 1957, a Master of Science in nuclear engineering in 1958, and a second M.S. in chemical engineering in 1959. His focus was on ways to refine oil.
After college, Koch started work at Arthur D. Little, Inc.
Career
In 1961 he moved back to Wichita to join his father's business, Rock Island Oil & Refining Company. In 1967, he became president of the business, which was then a medium-sized oil firm. In the same year, he renamed the firm Koch Industries in honor of his father. Charles's brothers Frederick and Bill had inherited stock in Koch Industries. In June 1983, after a legal and boardroom battle, the stakes of Frederick and Bill were bought out for $1.1 billion and Charles and his younger brother David became majority owners in the company. Despite the settlement, legal disputes continued until May 2001, when CBS News reported that Koch Industries settled for $25 million.In 2006, Koch Industries generated $90 billion in revenue, a growth of 2000 times over, which represents an annual compounded return of 18%., Koch was worth approximately US$41.3 billion according to the Forbes 400 list. Koch would routinely work 12-hour days at the office, weekends, and expected executives at Koch Industries to work weekends as well.
Koch has been a director of INTRUST Financial Corp. since 1982 and director of Koch Industries Inc. since 1982. He is director of resin and fiber company Invista and director of Georgia-Pacific LLC, paper and pulp products. Koch founded or helped found several organizations, including the Cato Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Bill of Rights Institute, and the Market-Based Management Institute. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.
Political and economic views
Charles Koch describes himself as a classical liberal and has formerly identified as a libertarian. He is opposed to corporate welfare and told the National Journal that his "overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of private economy and to maximize personal freedoms." He has expressed concern about too much government regulation in the U.S., stating that "we could be facing the greatest loss of liberty and prosperity since the 1930s." In addition, he has warned that drastic government overspending and a decline of the free enterprise system will prove detrimental to long-term social and economic prosperity.According to Stephen Moore, influences on Koch include Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Michael Polanyi, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Simon, Paul Johnson, Thomas Sowell, Charles Murray, Leonard Read, and F. A. Harper. The presidents he most admires include George Washington, Grover Cleveland, and Calvin Coolidge. In an interview with the American Journal of Business, Koch said he owes "a huge debt of gratitude to the giants who created the Austrian School . They developed principles that enabled me to gain an understanding of how the world works, and these ideas were a catalyst in the development of Market-Based Management." In particular, he expresses admiration for Ludwig von Mises' book Human Action, as well as the writings of Friedrich Hayek. Koch said "the short-term infatuation with quarterly earnings on Wall Street restricts the earnings potential of Fortune 500 publicly traded firms." He also considers public firms to be "feeding grounds for lawyers and lawsuits," with regulations like Sarbanes–Oxley only increasing the earnings potential of privately held companies.
Koch disdains "big government" and the "political class." He believes billionaires Warren Buffett and George Soros, who fund organizations with different ideologies, "simply haven't been sufficiently exposed to the ideas of liberty." Koch claimed "prosperity is under attack" by the Obama administration and sought to warn "of policies that threaten to erode our economic freedom and transfer vast sums of money to the state."
Koch supports cannabis legalization. As of 2021, Koch is "actively funding efforts to end federal marijuana prohibition."
In an April 2011 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Koch wrote:
Government spending on business only aggravates the problem. Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies, and regulations and tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay. Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.
His opposition to corporate welfare includes lobbying for an end to ethanol subsidies even though Koch Industries is a major ethanol producer. He is quoted as saying: "The first thing we've got to get rid of is business welfare and entitlements."
In an April 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Koch wrote, "the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation's own government." He criticized the Obama administration, saying that its "central belief and fatal conceit" is that people are not capable of running their own lives. "This is the essence of big government and collectivism," he wrote. He cited the "current healthcare debacle" as an example of disastrous government control. He complained that he had been the victim of "character assassination."
Market-based management
Koch's business philosophy, "market-based management", is described in his 2007 book The Science of Success. In an interview with the Wichita Eagle, he said that he was motivated to write the book by Koch Industries' 2004 acquisition of Invista so he could give new employees a "comprehensive picture" of MBM. According to the website of the Market-Based Management Institute, which Koch founded in 2005, MBM is "based on rules of just conduct, economic thinking, and sound mental models", harnessing the dispersed knowledge of employees just as markets harness knowledge in society. "It is organized in and interpreted through five dimensions: vision, virtue and talents, decision rights, incentives, and knowledge processes." In the book, Koch attempts to apply Friedrich Hayek's spontaneous order theory and Austrian entrepreneurial theory, such as that of Mises and Israel Kirzner, to organizational management.Political activities
Libertarianism
Koch funds and supports libertarian and free-enterprise policy and advocacy organizations. Two works that have been especially influential upon Koch's philosophy are Ludwig Von Mises' Human Action and F. A. Harper's Why Wages Rise. After reading Harper's book, Koch became involved with Harper's Institute for Humane Studies, of which he became a principal supporter. He has been on the board of IHS since 1966. Since the 1980s, IHS has been increasingly interested in aiding the careers of aspiring educators, journalists, and policy professionals with an interest in classical liberal thought. Among other projects, the IHS runs the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program, which "has supported more than 900 students during eight-week internships at public policy organizations, both in D.C. and around the country." In addition, almost 200 institutions of higher education in the U.S. are funded by the Charles G. Koch Foundation. What all the Koch-funded programs have in common is an interest in studying free societies with an eye to understanding the mechanisms behind the assumption that economic freedom benefits humanity.In 1977 he co-founded the Cato Institute with Edward H. Crane and Murray Rothbard.
In 2008, Koch was included in Businessweek's list of top 50 American givers. Between 2004 and 2008, Koch gave $246 million, focusing on "libertarian causes, giving money for academic and public policy research and social welfare." Koch was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from George Mason University in recognition of his financial support "through scholarships, faculty recruitment, and research grants".
In June 2019, the Charles Koch Foundation announced the foundation of anti-war think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, cosponsored by George Soros' Open Society Foundations. He is a board member at the Mercatus Center, a market-oriented research think tank at George Mason University.
Koch's philanthropic activities have focused on research, policy, and educational projects intended to advance free-market views. He has underwritten scholarships and financed the research of economists such as James Buchanan, and Friedrich Hayek. He has also "supported efforts to inspire at-risk young people to consider entrepreneurship, to teach American students the principles of limited government, and to connect recent graduates with market-oriented organizations, in an effort to launch their careers in public policy." Koch has given money to support public policy research focused on "developing voluntary, market-based solutions to social problems." He has given to the Bill of Rights Institute, a non-profit group that educates teachers, students, and others about the Bill of Rights. He has also given to the Youth Entrepreneurs, an organization that teaches business skills to at-risk youth in Kansas schools.