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The London resident, ranked No. 12 on the Forbes list of Australia's 40 Richest, has won the Prince of Wales Medal for Arts Philanthropy, Arts & Business.

“A lot of philanthropists are quite passive in their giving,” Arts & Business Chief Executive Colin Tweedy told Bloomberg in an interview. “Michael Hintze is very much the modern breed of philanthropist: the venture philanthropist, people who have huge skill in business and are willing to offer it to the charities they support.”

Hintze, 56, worked at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse First Boston before founding Convertible & Quantitative Strategies in 1999 with $200 million from CSFB. The firm's flagship fund has since returned 11 percent annualized.

The hedge fund manager helped fund the U.K.’s purchase of Titian’s Diana & Actaeon. The painting, which the Italian Renaissance master finished in 1556–1559, was acquired in 2008–2009 by the National Gallery, London, and the National Gallery of Scotland from the Bridgewater Collection for £50 million.

Hintze and his wife Dorothy, who support about 150 different causes, have donated about £12 million ($20 million) to the arts in the past year.

Australia-born Hintze funded the restoration of frescoes by Michelangelo inside the Vatican’s Pauline Chape, sponsored two galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and restored the Old Vic Theatre.

Through CQS and the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation, he provided funding to create a 'theatre in the round' at the Old Vic in London, a project estimated at £500,000.

Hintze serves as a trustee of the National Gallery and the Wandsworth Museum, which he rescued from eminent demise through a £2,000,000 rescue package. He is a patron of the Arts of the Vatican Museums and this year was appointed vice president of the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association.

"The more money I make, the more I can give," Hintze told Forbes in a 2007 interview. "That is a big motivator for me."