Hedge fund baron Crispin Odey bagged a bumper £15.6million payday after a roller-coaster year.
The share of profits which Odey scooped from his firm, Odey Asset Management, in the year to April 5, 2021 was more than 10 times his £1.5million pay a year earlier.
The windfall came as the performance fees which the firm generated rocketed from £896,000 to £39.8million.
Hamper time: Hedge fund baron Crispin Odey has bagged a bumper £15.6m payday after a rollercoaster year
Odey faced personal challenges even though business was growing. After a trial for sexual assault, the multimillionaire, who supported Brexit, divorced from Nichola, his wife and fund manager.
The couple, who were once dubbed the ‘City’s Posh and Becks’ due to their high profile, split after Odey was acquitted of indecently assaulting a junior banker in 1998.
Odey (62) admitted verbally proposing to the young woman he had invited to his house.
But he denied groping her, calling her allegations a ‘horrible slur’.
Odey Asset Management refused to comment on the results of the year.
But while performance fees shot up, indicating the asset manager’s bets had paid off, its base management fees dwindled from £23million to £16.9million.
The amount of money which it invests on behalf of clients rose from £2.2billion to £2.7billion.
It declined to discuss which firm’s punts in the period from January to April were huge winners. But over the last few months, Odey has placed bets on ‘Big Oil’.
He told the Financial Times in October that the trend for mainstream investors to dump unloved fossil fuel companies was ‘leaving fantastic returns on the table’.
He shorted Deliveroo, taking a punt that the takeaway firm’s shares would fall earlier this year.
The firm’s funds also placed bets against pandemic-hit cinema chain AMC Entertainment, which was one of the most popular companies involved in the ‘meme stocks’ phenomenon.
The social media collaboration of retail investors allowed them to purchase these businesses and drove up their share price, which in turn meant that hedge funds were losing money.
But Odey’s funds doubled down, predicting that the shares would eventually slide again. James Hanbury, a fund manager at Odey Asset Management, said the craze was creating ‘some major distortions’ and ‘compelling short opportunities’.
Odey, a prominent Tory donor, made £220million on the night of the Brexit vote, betting that markets would fall.
Since Odey had been agitating to leave the EU, critics were drawn to this punt.
The following morning, he quoted an Italian proverb: ‘Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca,’ or ‘The morning has gold in its mouth.’
After being charged with sexual assault, he resigned as the chief executive officer of his company last year.
Several of the manager’s funds were also quietly rebranded so they no longer bore his name.