Crispin Odey

Robin Crispin William Odey (born January 1959) is a British hedge fund manager and founder of Odey Asset Management.

In June 2023, the Financial Times published an investigative report which alleged that Odey had sexually harassed or assaulted 13 women over the course of 25 years. Odey denied the allegations. Odey Asset Management announced shortly afterwards that Odey would be leaving the firm. Investors soon started pulling their money from the firm following the report, prompting it to suspend withdrawals. In late June 2023 the company suspended flagship hedge funds, and it was speculated that it might break up. In March 2025, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Crispin Odey £1.8 million and banned him from the UK financial services industry for a 'lack of integrity'. Odey intends to challenge the decision in the Upper Tribunal. His father was from a family of Yorkshire industrialists, and his grandfather George Odey, "a formidable bully", had been the Conservative MP for Beverley. His mother's maiden name was Clitherow. Soon after graduation, he found out that his father had huge debts, and the trustees of Hotham Hall, a 4,000-acre estate that had been in his mother's family since 1720, transferred it to him absolutely.

Odey Asset Management (1991–2019) Odey founded Odey Asset Management in 1991. Through the early part of the 2000s, Odey worked closely with Hugh Hendry, whom he had recruited and who ran Odey's top performing Continental Europe Fund. Hendry left in 2005 to establish Eclectica Asset Management. In reference to Hendry, Odey himself said: "Odey in the 1990s was a one-man band; Odey in the 2000s was a two-man band".

In May 2009, Odey attracted some controversy for saying in The Times that he would leave the country to avoid paying 50% income tax. He was at the centre of further controversy in 2009 when it was suggested that he financially backed anti-EU campaigners in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty while some hedge funds had taken out specific bets on the insolvency of the country in the event that the vote not be carried. The Treaty passed by a margin of 67.1 per cent to 32.9 per cent. In faxes sent to RTÉ and TV3, Odey denied that he had funded the Libertas "no" campaign.

In May 2010, Odey Asset Management formed a new investment management firm with Geneva's Bruellan Wealth Management called Odey Bruellan. In April 2011, the firm had $6.5 to $7 billion under management, with Odey personally running $4 billion of assets.

In 2016, it was reported that Odey saw his personal fortune drop by £200 million after profits at Odey Asset Management suffered a significant decline. His salary was cut because profits were down nearly 45% from the previous year.

In 2016, Odey was a prominent backer of Brexit, He told the BBC on the morning of the result that he had made £220 million speculating that the markets would fall, saying "'Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca' – the morning has gold in its mouth". Overall, his flagship fund made losses of almost 50% in 2016. The firm's operating profits dropped from 44.3 million pounds to 18.6 million pounds in 2016. In August 2017, he remained an investor in Sky. After initially backing the Fox bid for Sky, in November 2017, he opposed the bid, after Sky's financial results proved "better than people forecast."

Assets under management at the fund dropped from $11.7 billion at the start of 2015, to $5.5 billion in September 2017. Also, funds in his flagship fund, Odey European, fell from €2.5 billion at the start of 2015 to €184 million. On 5 January 2018, The New York Times reported that Odey Asset Management had lost more than a fifth of its value in 2017, dropping around 20.5 percent.

According to Bloomberg in November 2017, he was "known for his bearish outlook" on the markets. The New York Times reported that Odey's fund's "performance has suffered heavily after he took a negative stance on the outlook for the global economy and bearish positions against shares that have not borne fruit." He had also made "bets against the Fed", explaining to his clients that "it would certainly be simpler to follow the market. But then we would be ignoring the fundamental data". He had also assumed there would be a crash resulting from high interest rates.

Since 2020: sexual assault allegations and departure from firm In May 2020, Odey was charged with indecent assault after a complaint by a woman over an incident in 1998. Odey denied the charge at Westminster Magistrates' Court in September and was bailed to appear at Hendon magistrates' court in February 2021. After a trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court in March 2021, Odey was cleared of the charge.

In June 2023, the Financial Times reported allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted 13 women over 25 years. Odey denied the allegations. Following the Financial Times report, it was reported that Financial Conduct Authority was preparing to launch an investigation into Odey Asset Management regarding the allegations about Odey. It was also announced that Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase were cancelling their relationships with the firm.

On 10 June, Odey Asset Management's executive committee said that Odey was no longer involved with the firm, commenting "he will no longer have any economic or personal involvement in the partnership."

In 2026, the media reported that the head of the fund described Crispin Odey as a "sex pest".

2025: FCA ban In March 2025, the FCA fined Crispin Odey £1.8 million and banned him from the UK financial services industry for a 'lack of integrity'. Odey was said to have shown "reckless disregard" for the governance of his hedge fund, with his conduct showing he was "not a fit and proper person to perform any function related to regulated activities". Odey intends to challenge the decision in the Upper Tribunal.

On 24 March 2026, Odey admitted to the court that he "groped a colleague's breasts without her consent in 2005". He also told the court that he does not remember cornering a female employee after a boozy lunch and saying to her "I could attack you now".

Odey subsequently married Nichola Pease, deputy chairman of JO Hambro Capital Management and a member of one of the founding families of Barclays Bank. The couple had two sons and one daughter.

According to the Sunday Times Rich List 2019, Odey and his wife Nichola Pease were worth £775 million. They divorced in 2021. Odey married Diana Vitkova the following year.