Frank Hanna III
Frank J. Hanna III is an American entrepreneur and merchant banker who has been described as "one of the leading Catholic philanthropists in the USA."[1] He was one of three entrepreneurs profiled in the Acton Institute's documentary film, The Call of the Entrepreneur.[2]
Education and career
Hanna was born into a family of entrepreneurs[3] and, in particular, credits his experiences growing up around his father's real estate business as preparing him for the business world.[4] After studying at the University of Georgia, where he earned BBA and JD degrees,[5] Hanna and his younger brother David funded a project that tested a method he had devised for helping companies rid themselves of bad loans. This led to the brothers' founding an investment firm that they later sold.[4] (David Hanna is currently the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Atlanticus.)[6]
Frank Hanna was for some years a corporate attorney with Troutman Sanders, an Atlanta law firm.[7] Since 2006, he has held the position of CEO of the investment firm Hanna Capital, LLC.[8]
For over two decades now, Hanna Capital has engaged in private equity and venture capital investing, generating above-market returns while providing leadership and philanthropic support for scores of non-profit projects. Since 1995 through its various affiliates, Hanna Capital has underwritten over $20 billion in receivables and raised over $600 million, investing the latter in the following areas: consumer lending, health care insurance, cellular payment processing, auto finance, cloud computing, real estate management, bond trading, media distribution, materials development, predictive algorithms, microelectronics, nutraceuticals, and investment brokerage.
Public service
The Hanna family has long been involved in supporting Catholic charities, including helping to start three new Catholic schools in Atlanta.[9] In 2002, Hanna was chosen by George W. Bush as co-chair of the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans[10] In 2007, Hanna received the Philanthropy Roundtable's William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership "for his national leadership in K-12 education reform."[9]
Hanna is the founder of the Solidarity Association,[11] which obtained from the Bodmer Foundation in Cologny, Switzerland, portions of the 14-15 Bodmer Papyri, P75), dating from between A.D. 175 and 225. The papyrus includes the oldest extant copy of portions of the Gospels of Luke and John as well as the oldest transcription of the Our Father.
In January 2007, Hanna presented the papyrus to Pope Benedict XVI in a ceremony at the Vatican. "The papyrus contains about half of each of the Gospels of Luke and John. It was written in Egypt and perhaps used as a liturgical book," explained Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church, during the ceremony. Experts see the joining of Luke and John in one papyrus as a demonstration that for the first Christian communities, the Gospels formed a unity.
The document agrees with the Codex Vaticanus, a fourth-century edition of the Bible and it demonstrates, thereby, that the oldest versions of the New Testament that are preserved in their totality correspond with the Gospels that already circulated among the Christian communities centuries earlier. The Bodmer Papyri are kept in the Vatican Library and will soon be made available for scholarly review. In the future, excerpts may be put on display for the general public.
Pope Benedict XVI has named Hanna a Knight of the Grand Cross in the Order of St. Gregory, and Hanna is a Knight of Malta, a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and serves on the boards of the Papal Foundation, EWTN, the American Enterprise Institute, and numerous other organizations.
Book
In 2008, The Crossroad Publishing Company published Hanna's What Your Money Means: And How to Use It Well.[12] The book presents Hanna's perspective on healthy attitudes towards money and his advice about philanthropic strategies. In April 2009, Reader's Digest published an interview with Hanna about the book as well as about the proper use of money. In a review published by the Philanthropy Roundtable, George Weigel said of the book that,
Hanna has written a truly radical book, in both the popular and classical sense of the adjective. "Radical," after all, derives from the Latin word radix, meaning root, and What Your Money Means gets us to the root of the matter. It's a primer on the meaning of wealth, in which Hanna thinks aloud with his readers about material possessions—and what it means to have a lot of them—with the aid of some neatly explained philosophical and moral principles. How to Use It Well is the provocation: a proposal for disposing of wealth that, if taken seriously and adopted widely, could change the face of American philanthropy, dramatically.[13]
References
- ^ Hudson, Deal W. "Money: Making It, Spending It, Giving It Away." Catholic Online. 23 October 2008. [1]
- ^ "The Call of the Entrepreneur: Frank Hanna." Acton Media. 2007. [2]
- ^ "Hanna family"[3]
- ^ a b Brooks, Arthur C. "Q&A: Frank Hanna on the Meaning of Money." Reader's Digest. April 2009. [4]
- ^ "Frank J. Hanna III." Hanna Capital LLC. [5]
- ^ Atlanticus[6]
- ^ "Profile: Frank J. Hanna." Forbes. [7]
- ^ Hanna Capital, LLC.[8]
- ^ a b "The Call of the Philanthropist ." Philanthropy. 1 October 2007. [9]
- ^ "Acton Institute Board of Directors Member Appointed to Co-Chair President's Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans." Acton Institute. 30 January 2002. [10]
- ^ Solidarity Association[11]
- ^ http://www.amazon.com/What-Your-Money-Means-Well/dp/0824525205
- ^ Weigel, George. "Toward a Philosophy of Philanthropy." Philanthropy. 1 November 2008. [12]
