For over three decades, Mr. Crispin O’Day dominated the stage hedge funds from London having a reputation as an eccentric manager whose actions bring diametrically opposite results: either huge profits or huge losses.

His company Odey Asset Management was once one of the largest hedge fund in Europe. As for Odie himself, he looked like he was from another era. Impressive in appearance, more than 1.80 m tall, he cultivated for himself the image of a sophisticated Cyrillic revolutionary gentleman. The Financial Times once described him as “a big puppy in a pinstripe suit”.

Odie used his wealth and influence to strengthen him. Conservative Party from Tori V Great Britainsupporting it Brexit and building friendships with politicians such as the former prime minister Boris Johnsonincluding.

Although Odie’s assets under management are down from their high of $19.8 billion a few years ago, he has managed to maintain his reputation as one of London’s toughest hedge fund managers.

The 64-year-old man is accused of, among other things, masturbating to a businesswoman after a business meeting and forcing a woman to hold his penis.

The incidents he is accused of took place between 1998 and 2021.

This isn’t the first time Odie has faced serious allegations of misconduct. In 2021, he won a case in British courts in which a banker accused him of sexual harassment.

Reports of the allegations against him, appearing in Bloomberg, The Sunday Times and the Tortoise Media podcast, have not done enough damage to his position.

However, UK regulators continued to consider Oday “suitable”.

According to the FT, senior management at Odey Asset Management was aware of his behavior, but it took 16 years before a formal internal investigation was launched against him.

However, when they got to the point of forcing him, he let them go.

The 64-year-old man himself now rejects as “garbage” what he is charged with. The law firm representing him “strongly disputes” the allegations it says are behind a “pre-planned plan” against her client.

Robin Crispin William Odie founded Odey Asset Management in Mayfair in the early 1990s. He was originally from Yorkshire and graduated from Oxford University. However, by the time he graduated, his family was financially devastated, having lost their fortune. Odie thought he could get rich again by returning to the banking industry, where he began working for Barings International back in the mid-1980s. son-in-law Rupert Murdoch whose daughter Prudence he married, but their marriage did not last long.

In those years, from the early 1990s, Audi would come into the office every day before 8 a.m. in an expensive suit and suspenders, pink or red. Discussions with his staff were sometimes heated. Every day he would disappear to eat at some expensive restaurant. But when he returned to the office after lunch, he was… unpredictable, as they say, and also liked to hunt on weekends.

In the early years, in the early 1990s, things were not going well for his company, but he did not give up and after a while the company began to recover. In the period 2007-2008, he bet on the collapse of British banks and won tens of millions of dollars.

However, since 2007 he began to do in Conservative Party from Tori but also in such factions as, for example, the Euroskeptic anti-immigrant party UKIP. In this context, Odey began to form personal relationships with politicians such as Boris Johnson And Jacob Reese Mogg and former finance minister Quasi Kwarteng a month ago he worked at Odey Asset Management.

Robin Crispin William O’Day had already been married since the early 1990s to the extremely wealthy banker Nicola Pease, with whom he had three children.

For a number of years, Odey Asset Management has been dominated by men.

Initially, women were only hired as administrators or in auxiliary secretarial positions. However, as the firm grew, a small number of women eventually joined its investment team.

In 2003, Jenn Meyer moved to the UK from her native Australia and joined Odey Asset Management as an administrator. She was 22 years old, and she was far from home, without friends and family. From the first moment, Odey paid special attention to her. “I must have looked very vulnerable,” she says.

Shortly after she began working for him, Odie offered to take her into the apartment, telling her, “I can take care of you.”

According to Meyher, the atmosphere in the office at the time was “extremely sexist”. Odey openly questioned her about her bra size and her previous love affairs. He stood behind her as she sat alone at the front desk and massaged her shoulders, moving his hands to her breasts, and once raped her until she eventually resigned in 2004, even suing her then employer .

“Everyone knew what was happening, but most of them turned a blind eye,” she says of her colleagues at the time.

Source: Financial Times.