The downfall of a UK hedge fund titan

This is an audio transcript of the Behind the Money podcast episode: ‘The downfall of a UK hedge fund titan’

Michela Tindera
For decades, if you worked in Britain’s financial sector, you knew who Crispin Odey was. You couldn’t miss him.

Madison Marriage
He was this larger-than-life figure. Loud, booming voice. Wears very kind of smart suits with braces. Huge passion for art and for hunting. He’s an unusual character and one I think many people don’t forget.

Michela Tindera
That’s the FT’s Madison Marriage from our special investigations team. She tells me that Crispin Odey, who she’s describing there, founded a hedge fund called Odey Asset Management in 1991. It was known for taking high-risk punts on the market that could deliver big returns, but also big losses, and Crispin Odey cultivated a reputation as an eccentric in British high finance.

Madison Marriage
He was sort of an outlier in the industry. I think he kind of came from this heyday of 1980s finance, where men would go out for long boozy lunches and then come back to the office and make a packet of money just by being kind of smart and well-informed.

Michela Tindera
Then came the 1990s: the finance industry professionalised. But Crispin Odey remained true to form. In British financial circles, Odey seemed untouchable. He built up strong political ties to the UK Conservative party. He funded pro-Brexit groups, and he was frequently quoted in British financial media as an expert on the markets. But then two weeks ago, the FT published a report forensically detailing allegations of sexual misconduct against Odey. The fallout has been swift and severe. Odey has been ousted from his firm, and the latest reporting shows that now that firm, once one of Europe’s largest hedge funds, is being broken up.

Madison Marriage
I definitely think it’s a watershed moment in that Crispin Odey is one of the biggest names in London’s finance scene and he has been ejected from his firm incredibly quickly, and the City of London is going to run a mile away from him. So this has been a big deal for the British financial sector, and I think it will give other institutions pause for thought when considering who to do business with.

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Michela Tindera
I’m Michela Tindera from the Financial Times. On today’s episode of Behind the Money, I’m sitting down with two reporters from the FT’s special investigations team who broke this story. Madison Marriage, who you already heard, and Antonia Cundy. They’ll discuss their experience reporting on this and whether Odey’s case will spark a reckoning in British finance.

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Welcome to the show, both of you. Thanks for being on.

Madison Marriage
Thank you for having us.

Antonia Cundy
Thanks for having us.

Michela Tindera
So, Madison, you and Antonia both have been reporting on this for months. And you spoke to over a dozen women who accused Crispin Odey of misconduct. What specifically did you find?

Madison Marriage
So the 13 women, eight of them, alleged that he had sexually assaulted them and the remainder said that they had been sexually harassed. So the sexual harassment largely came in the office and was frequently aimed at the receptionists. The assault allegations are obviously incredibly serious. The most recent sexual assault allegation concerned his behaviour following a dinner party at his Gloucestershire mansion in December 2021.

Michela Tindera
So why did you decide to report on this now? What really piqued your interests and made you want to dig deeper into this story?

Madison Marriage
The big trigger, to be quite honest, was somebody else’s reporting. So Paul Caruana Galizia is a very impressive journalist for Tortoise Media and he released a podcast in December of last year which brought together the accounts of a few women who had previously spoken to the press, as well as four women who had never spoken to the press before. I listened to the podcast and it was fantastic, an amazing piece of journalism. And I was really struck by the credibility of the people he had spoken to, the evidence that they gave him. They had diary entries and letters and emails, and it just seemed to have no impact. It bounced right off Crispin. You know, there was no intervention from the regulator. There were no new police inquiries. He was still being feted by his peers. His firm picked up management firm of the year at this kind of very glitzy hedge fund awards in February. You know, he just appeared to be a kind of Teflon figure who was getting away with it all. So we started speaking to Paul about his sourcing and new people that might have come forward. And then separately, one of our colleagues had a couple of leads, so that’s when we just started digging. And the more we dug, the more we found.

Michela Tindera
Now, we won’t go into all the details you’ve reported about the assault and harassment allegations. Some of them are pretty graphic. If listeners want to read about that, we have a link to the story in our show notes. But Antonia, could you talk a bit more about who’s making these allegations and what sorts of things did they tell you?

Antonia Cundy
So we spoke to 11 former receptionists, which was a role that seemed to be particularly in the front line of Crispin’s behaviour. The allegations ranged from sexual harassment to violent sexual assault. And for the women in the office, what particularly stood out to me was the normalisation of his behaviour in the office and how lots of the women who had junior female members of staff, many of them who joined fresh out of university, sort of didn’t know or have any other office environment to compare the situation to, how they were given these coded warnings, for want of a better word, about Crispin’s behaviour. So they were told he was quite eccentric or a bit of a maverick. And when that turned into inappropriate remarks and then unwanted touching, they didn’t feel like they could raise their concerns because his behaviour was completely normalised. So one junior female member of staff told us that she was warned in her first week not to be alone in the lift with Crispin, particularly after lunch. And she told us that it happened, that warning, in a completely casual sense. You know like, “Here’s your password. Here’s your notebook. By the way, don’t get in the lift with Crispin.”

Michela Tindera
In your reporting, you also spoke with many other sources who didn’t experience sexual harassment or assault, but did help to paint a picture of what the workplace culture was like at Odey Asset Management. Could you tell me a bit more about that?

Antonia Cundy
Yeah. So in the reporting process and we’re really trying to get inside what it is like to work at Odey Asset Management. We did also speak to over 40 former insiders and they painted a picture of Crispin as being someone who was very volatile. So he could be incredibly charming, incredibly generous and very charismatic, bursting into erudite outbursts in Greek and Latin and giving his macro views on the world. But equally, he was also someone who could lose his temper. And I think that was quite an intimidating presence to be around. Some of the people we spoke to said that he mimed pointing his fingers at them in the shape of a gun and shooting when they displeased him. And some of them sort of played along with that. Others found it quite shocking. But he was very prone to angry outbursts and was quite erratic in what might spark those.

Michela Tindera
Yeah. And how did the reporting process go? I mean, how difficult was it to convince sources to speak with you about their experiences?

Antonia Cundy
It’s really, really difficult because lots of them are terrified. Crispin Odey is a very powerful, very rich man. And you think the idea of putting yourself up against that is understandably completely terrifying. I think also what’s difficult for the women is that post-publication it’s easy to look at the article together and see, you know, 13 women all together. That’s really strong. But when you’re talking to them individually, they feel like they’re putting their necks out and that they’re quite alone in the process. And it’s very difficult to convey to them that they are part of a group of women who are all together very strong. But obviously, when you’re going through the reporting process and you’re showing them what you would like to include about their own account, it feels incredibly exposing.

Michela Tindera
Mm-hmm. What stuck out to you most about these women’s experiences?

Madison Marriage
I think for me, the thing that really stuck out is the sense of complicity. So the fact that many of the women we interviewed said there had been pretty unpleasant situations where a male employee had either walked past just after it happened or in the room when it happened or who actually facilitated the event itself. So Jae-Ann Maher, who is on the record in our article, you know, an amazing woman who’s been incredibly brave, said that she was working near Crispin’s desk and he instructed her to come sit next to him. And she kind of got out of it and made an excuse. And a fund manager in the room said, “No, no, you’ve got to do it.” And picked up her chair, went and plonked it next to Crispin’s, and then he started caressing her thigh. So I think that’s the thing that I find really appalling, is many people today will claim they didn’t see anything. They didn’t hear anything. They might have heard rumours, but they were never sure. But that’s just not true.

Michela Tindera
Can you tell me more about allegations he faced prior to your story coming out?

Madison Marriage
Crispin Odey was charged with indecent assault in July 2020 and that case went to court in February 2021. It was a historic claim of indecent assaults at Crispin Odey’s house in Chelsea, London, dating back to 1998. A female banker claimed that he had invited her back there and groped her. She was unsuccessful in court, and the judge, when he gave his verdict, made some pretty controversial comments. He said that Crispin Odey could leave the courtroom with his good character intact and congratulated him on reaching his sixties without a stain on his character. He said of the female complainants that her account had been riddled with inconsistencies and that she had a vivid imagination.

Michela Tindera
Mmm. Wow. So I’m curious then, as you mentioned, with this podcast that came out last year and with the court hearing, I mean, obviously the judge ruled in his favour, but why do you think previous allegations against Crispin Odey didn’t shatter his image?

Antonia Cundy
I think partly just because they were reported in quite a disparate manner. So for example, there were two women who shared their accounts with Bloomberg. One woman shared her story with the Sunday Times, and then several women shared their story with Tortoise. And then, of course, there’s the court case claimant. So I think sometimes the trouble with that reporting is that with slightly smaller numbers in different publications, it’s easier for Crispin to brush it off and they garner less traction in the media and are less likely to be reported. What was really strong about our investigation was the total number of 13 women and the depth we went to on it. You know, looking at Crispin not just as a predator, but as a man and as the head of a hedge fund and as a famous figure in the City of London. I think that did a lot for FT readers and really helped the article gain a lot of traction.

Michela Tindera
I mean, I wonder what you guys think about the rules that are put in place to handle these sorts of things. I mean, some people just hearing this podcast might be like, “Where was the HR department in any of this?”

Antonia Cundy
Well, the HR department of Odey Asset Management was quite often one young woman working on her own. So I think it’s somewhat unsurprising that there was little movement in that respect. But the FCA, which is Britain’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, they opened an investigation in the autumn of 2021 into Crispin Odey’s behaviour, and that was looking at sexual misconduct allegations against him, including a number of formal complaints that had been made internally at the company. So in 2004, 2005 and several in 2020, then towards the end of 2021 in December when Crispin Odey fired his own executive committee after they tried to discipline him for his behaviour towards women, the FCA kind of shifted their focus a bit and started looking at governance issues. That has been going on for now almost two years. And then in the wake of our reporting, they have once again reopened, broadened the investigation to look at sexual misconduct allegations. But there is definitely a huge question lying at the FCA’s door of why has it taken so long? What powers do they have and when will they act?

Michela Tindera
So I want to broaden this discussion out a bit. So the #MeToo movement really took off in 2017 with accusations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, and that rippled out into many different circles, certainly in the US entertainment media. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about what happened in the UK, what happened there. Was there much fallout?

Madison Marriage
So I broke quite a big story in January 2018 about a wildly misogynistic, kind of abusive charity event that was taking place in London annually. It was called the Presidents Club, and effectively, it was an all-male dinner held at the Dorchester Hotel. And the organisers chipped in 130 women to work as hostesses at the events. While you had a kind of pack of braying men getting drunk and bidding on auction items and harassing and sexually assaulting the women, the drunker they got. And I went undercover and exposed the events and it shut down quite quickly afterwards. So that was a big breakthrough. And I’d say maybe one of the first breakthroughs in terms of #MeToo business reporting in the UK post-Weinstein. Since then there was a big Telegraph scoop about Philip Green’s behaviour. So he was the head of Arcadia Group, which owns Topshop, the retailer, and that was a very legally difficult story. That was the kind of second big business #MeToo story. Otherwise, I don’t feel like there’s been a kind of watershed moment for kind of cultural change in business or finance in the UK.

Michela Tindera
As you said, you’ve listed a few things which are some of your own reporting that have brought some of these accusations to light. But why hasn’t there been more of a widespread fallout from the #MeToo movement?

Madison Marriage
I think there has been different kinds of fallout. So I think employee tolerance of things like bullying has diminished considerably. And I’ve written articles about, you know, partners of various firms being ousted over a kind of bullying accusations. So I do think culture has shifted and improved. But I think for people who are extremely wealthy and extremely powerful, the fear factor in going up against them is still just really high. And actually, that applies to both sources, the victims as well as the press.

Michela Tindera
What do you think this situation says more broadly about the UK finance world, that these sorts of things were taking place, you know, often in the in the workplace? Does this say something more broadly about the finance sector in the UK?

Madison Marriage
I think there’s a huge question to be answered around complicity. I’ve said that already about the people internally at Odey Asset Management, but I also think the businesses that partnered with him, the regulator, the lawyers who represent him — there’s a whole network of people where I think his behaviour was an open secret and effectively nobody kind of paid attention to this or moved to cut ties until, as one of our sources puts it, it’s affected the bottom line. So effectively, when it became a kind of toxic reputational issue for everyone, all of the financial institutions that normally do business with Odey Asset Management very quickly started moving in the other direction.

Antonia Cundy
Yeah, and one of our columnists put it brilliantly the other day where they said these banks and other financial institutions, they cut ties very, very quickly. Was that because they were able to suddenly at lightning speed, do their own investigations and reach conclusions that led them to make those decisions? Or is it actually because they knew all along who they were working with?

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Michela Tindera
So I’m wondering if you could describe the fallout so far. What have we seen since your report came out?

Madison Marriage
The fallout has been immediate and kind of spectacular. So very quickly after our reporting came out, several financial institutions said they were either going to cut ties with Odey Asset Management or were going to review their relationships with the firm. So the ones that said they would cut ties were Morgan Stanley, Exane, the French brokerage, and Goldman Sachs. JPMorgan said they were reviewing things and have said they’re also planning to cut ties. Schroders pulled their remaining investments with the firm and there are a few others. So in terms of the City of London’s response, you know, it’s been really amazing, I think, actually for the women we spoke to, to see consequences.

Michela Tindera
And what has happened to Crispin Odey since your story came out?

Madison Marriage
Yeah, the biggest headline was on the weekend. So two days after our reporting, the partners announced that they had removed him from the firm that he founded 30 years ago.

Michela Tindera
So what sort of further fallout are you expecting in the coming weeks?

Antonia Cundy
So last Thursday, which was exactly a week to the day since we published the first investigation, the firm announced that it was in advanced discussions to rehouse some of its funds and fund managers, which basically means it’s looking to sell off parts of the business. So that was a pretty critical development. There’ll be big questions in the next coming weeks what that means and what that will entail, because it’s definitely too early to say. It’s, you know, the complete end of days for Odey Asset Management. The firm does still exist and it has not yet been wound down, though they are in advanced discussions about selling off parts of it. So yeah, that will be a key area to watch for developments in the next couple of weeks.

We also know that MPs are going to grill the FCA over its role in this and the form of its investigation. So at this Treasury select committee often meets with the regulator as part of its job to hold the regulator to account. And the chair of that committee sent a letter to the FCA asking for more information about the exact nature of its investigation into Odey and what had happened and what had it been doing and looking into his conduct over the past two years. And so we know that in response to that letter, when they next meet the regulator, they’re definitely going to be facing some questions from MPs.

Michela Tindera
Madison, also, how does the fallout here with Crispin Odey compare to other similar reporting you’ve done?

Madison Marriage
So it’s really hard when you’re working on an investigation like this to know what kind of impact it will have. And I think my expectations were quite low given the track record of what had happened with previous stories around Crispin Odey, in that the impact had not been huge. I haven’t written a story where the impact has been as immediate, as swift, as far-reaching since the Presidents Club investigation in 2018. That was that kind of charity gala where women were being harassed and abused and that organisation shut down within days of our report coming out. So for me, it’s a kind of once-in-a-five-year event and it’s been remarkable.

Michela Tindera
Yeah. So what has Crispin Odey said about these allegations and what about for Odey Asset Management?

Madison Marriage
The firm said that it didn’t recognise our depiction of its culture and that it takes all allegations of sexual harassment very seriously and that it’s got appropriate internal HR procedures for dealing with complaints. That is not something which our sources agree with, but that’s the firm’s stance.

Antonia Cundy
And Crispin Odey himself, his response has been a typical Crispin Odey form. When I phoned him immediately after we sent detailed information about the allegations against him that we intended to report, he briefly told me on the phone he had read the email and thought it was all rubbish and then hung up, that he didn’t want to talk to me. And when he was informed that he was being ousted from the firm and I called him and asked him for comment on that, he implied that he was going to fight that. He said, “Oh, you have to have a willing buyer, willing seller, how are they going to do that?” And then also promptly hung up. And more formally, we’ve also heard from Odey’s lawyers who have told us that they strenuously dispute all the allegations against him.

Michela Tindera
I guess I’m sort of wondering, do you think that there is some kind of wider systemic issue in UK finance that needs to be addressed? Or do you feel like this is maybe an isolated incident?

Madison Marriage
I think finance attracts people who work very hard, who like a lot of money, and it can attract its fair share of big egos and bullies. That said, there are plenty of wonderful people working in finance. It is disproportionately male-dominated, especially in senior roles, and I think that can lead people to turn a blind eye to issues when they’re emerging or perhaps be unaccepting of them and make it harder for junior women to come forward when they have encountered a problem. I do think this is probably a very egregious case, and I’d like to hope that there isn’t anyone as high profile as Crispin Odey behaving as badly as he did for several decades.

Antonia Cundy
I think another issue that this has highlighted for us is that when people do report problems internally, how do companies react to that? So in the example of Odey Asset Management, they had an internal investigation, but that was conducted by a longstanding law firm that had worked for the business and by internal members of staff. And so the trust that the women who were interviewed had in that investigation was very, very low. They didn’t believe that it was going to be truly anonymised. They felt it would go straight back to Crispin. And they also, we know, did not interview all of the former employees that had allegations against Crispin that we spoke to. So I think there are big questions about how when companies are alerted to these sexual misconduct issues, how they go about investigating them internally in a way that is effective and will encourage victims to genuinely speak to them in a truthful manner. 

Michela Tindera
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I’m curious what has come out of this reporting. Do you guys see this sparking any kind of change in the broader UK financial sector or what do you kind of see as the broader ripple effects of this?

Madison Marriage
My only hope is that this would embolden anyone else going through similar, even if they’re one lone victim, to report that behaviour first internally. If that doesn’t work, to the appropriate authorities. And if that doesn’t work, to come to us.

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Michela Tindera
Our reporters, Antonia and Madison, tell me they aren’t finished reporting on Crispin Odey. They say that since their story came out a couple of weeks ago, they’ve already had new sources come forward with similar allegations.

Madison Marriage
If you’ve been affected by Crispin Odey or a different kind of high-ranking business person or financier, we’d love to hear from you.

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Michela Tindera
If you have something to share with Madison and Antonia, you can find their email addresses in our show notes.

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Behind the Money is hosted by me, Michela Tindera. Saffeya Ahmed is our producer. Topher Forhecz and Manuela Saragosa are our executive producers. Sound design and mixing by Sam Giovinco. Cheryl Brumley is the global head of audio. Thanks for listening. See you next week.