Crispin Odey has stepped back from several companies connected to his family, marking the hedge fund founder’s latest retreat from business activities following sexual harassment allegations.
(Bloomberg) — Crispin Odey has stepped back from several companies connected to his family, marking the hedge fund founder’s latest retreat from business activities following sexual harassment allegations.
Odey, 64, resigned this month as a director of three UK companies that oversee assets for his adult children, according to registry filings. One of the firms holds an investment in UK asset manager Ruffer.
Nichola Pease, 62, a onetime chief executive officer of JO Hambro Capital Management and Odey’s former wife, is still a director of the businesses, which disclosed investments totaling about £50 million ($63.4 million) in their latest accounts.
Former JO Hambro executive Lisa-Marie Rowland, 58, became a director of the firms in June, the same month Odey Asset Management swiftly unraveled after the publication of a Financial Times investigation into its founder’s treatment of women over a 25-year period.
Odey and Pease didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The hedge fund tycoon has disappeared from numerous business roles after multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Odey, who has denied the claims, was in June removed from the eponymous firm he founded in 1991 and also stepped back from a UK investment fund focused on the Lloyd’s of London insurance market.
Odey Asset Management, meanwhile, said this month it’s in advanced talks to move the portfolio manager of its flagship hedge fund to Landseer Asset Management UK and is shutting some of its other funds as the London-based firm reaches the final stages of a major revamp.
Read more: Odey’s $710 Million Fortune Mostly Trapped Out of His Reach
Odey previously held a stake in Bywell Hall Limited, Eastbach Limited and Hotham Investments Limited, but filings show he and Pease transferred their holdings in the businesses to their children during 2018. Gifted assets aren’t subject to UK inheritance tax from seven years after the transfer date.
While the companies don’t publish their full investment portfolios, Eastbach holds an indirect stake in Ruffer, a London-based asset manager that manages about £24.7 billion for pension funds, charities and wealthy families. A Ruffer holding entity for the firm’s early investors paid out more than £50 million in dividends over the past two decades, with Odey receiving a chunk of that total before he transferred his stake, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Each of the companies’ names has personal significance. Hotham Hall is a 4,000-acre estate in East Yorkshire that was in Odey’s mother’s family for more than two centuries, before he sold it during the 1980s to keep his parents financially afloat. He and Pease organized a summer party in 2014 at the Northumberland mansion of Bywell Hall.
Eastbach Court is the Gloucestershire mansion where Odey and Pease partly lived before their 2021 divorce. The £1.5 million home was registered solely in Pease’s name in January, filings show.
–With assistance from Nishant Kumar.
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