Six more women have alleged that financier Crispin Odey sexually assaulted or harassed them, expanding the timeline of his abuse across five decades and raising further questions as to the extent his behaviour was tolerated by senior colleagues.
The women came forward after the Financial Times last month published the accounts of 13 women who said they had been abused by Odey. Since that article, the hedge fund manager has been ousted from Odey Asset Management and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has come under scrutiny over its handling of a long-running probe into the firm.
The new accounts have been corroborated through documents seen by the FT as well as through interviews with friends and family members the women confided in. Odey’s lawyers previously told the FT he strenuously disputed the first set of allegations. Odey and Odey Asset Management did not respond to requests for comment regarding the new allegations.
The earliest of the new allegations dates back to 1985 when an interior designer, then 26, said she was violently assaulted at Odey’s home in London. Odey suddenly kissed her face, grabbed her breasts, pushed her against a wall and pressed his exposed penis against her, she told the FT.
She said she kicked Odey in the crotch and ran to the front door. “I had a very strong feeling of thinking: ‘Shit, am I going to get out of that door before he gets to me again?’” She said the assault “massively” affected her life and in particular her relationships with men. She decided to speak out now because she wanted people to know that Odey “has been doing this for a hell of a long time”. She said: “That’s my main driving force.”
A second woman said she was working as an assistant in a Mayfair gallery in 1994 when Odey, a regular client, demanded she take him to an anteroom to view a painting of Mount Vesuvius erupting. There he grabbed her tightly around the waist and started kissing the back of her neck. “I was thinking ‘Shit, this is not good’ because no one else was around. I thought ‘If I scream, he might put his hand over my mouth and it could escalate into something nasty’.”
To de-escalate the situation, she decided to put on a jokey tone and told him: “Crispin, you are being a really naughty boy.” As she spoke, she slapped his wrist so hard that his watch fell to the floor. As he stooped to pick it up, she ran out of the room. She said she decided to disclose her experience now because she is angered that Odey dismissed the allegations from the 13 women as “rubbish”.
A third woman, a former receptionist at Odey Asset Management, said she was sexually harassed by Odey in 2000. She said Odey once sent her home to change out of trousers and into a skirt; and that Odey often asked her to file papers that were scattered across the floor of his office. “He was clearly watching me bending down,” she said. “It made me feel very uncomfortable.”
Odey once pinned her to the wall of the office lift, she said, and kissed her forcefully on the mouth. After she struggled to push him off, he released her and she asked: “What are you doing?” In response, Odey took her hand and placed it on his, she said. Then he asked her: “Have I been a naughty little boy? Would you like to slap my wrist?” “It was that statement that made me think, ‘You’ve said that before’,” she told the FT.
She said she left the building and never returned. No one at Odey Asset Management ever contacted her to ask why she had left so abruptly, she said. She has come forward now because her experience predates the workplace misconduct previously reported by the FT. “He’s a sexual predator,” she said. “This is a problem that doesn’t just start then; it probably dates back for as long as he’s been in contact with women.”
A fourth woman said she was harassed in 2006 when she was working as an intern at Odey Asset Management. Then aged 22, the woman said she was offered a job towards the end of her placement. Odey invited her for a drink at a pub nearby to celebrate but then suggested they go to his house instead to sample his wine collection.
At his house, she said Odey changed into a dressing gown and pyjamas and sat close to her on the sofa. The former intern said she feared the situation was about to get “really, really creepy” but to her relief, Odey’s wife returned home and she left soon after.
Later, the former intern said she was alone with Odey in the office lift when the hedge fund manager “lunged” at her. The two incidents led her to turn down the employment offer.
“Crispin acted really inappropriately when I was there. When I was offered a job I was definitely not going to take it because he was pretty unpleasant,” she said, adding that she warned other women about Odey’s behaviour but did not feel she could raise her concerns at the company because of his power.
A fifth woman, an entrepreneur, said she met Odey in the mid-2000s at a drinks party where he expressed an interest in her business and ended up making an investment in it.
In autumn 2007, she said he invited her to his home along with his wife and children. Odey was 48 at the time and she was in her late 20s. During her visit, she said Odey engineered a situation to be alone with her and suddenly grabbed her breasts. She told him to stop, which he did.
She has decided to come forward now because she wants to help put an end to his misconduct. “I won’t let this define me in any way, but this sort of behaviour has never and should never be acceptable. It is a blatant abuse of power,” she said.
A sixth woman said she was sexually harassed and inappropriately touched by Odey while working as a receptionist at Odey Asset Management in 2018. She was 24 at the time and he was 59. She spoke to Bloomberg about some of her experiences in 2021 and has given a fuller account to the FT.
She said that throughout her three-month employment at the firm’s offices on Upper Grosvenor Street, she received unwanted shoulder massages from Odey on a weekly basis; on several occasions, Odey asked her to stand up and do a “twirl” for him; once when she was wearing a dress with a scooped back he came up behind her and ran his finger down her spine.
She decided to leave after Odey returned from lunch one day and told her she looked so attractive her boyfriend would “rape you on the spot”. “Talking lightly about a rape made me realise he was this powerful monster who, when it came to women, thought they were just at his disposal.”
The former receptionist said she left the firm shortly after this incident. Before her departure, she told an HR executive about her experiences with Odey. The HR executive said she was very surprised and that no one else had ever made similar allegations against Odey, according to the former receptionist. (The FT reported last month that Odey Asset Management had received formal complaints — that were kept on his HR file — about the founder’s conduct in 2004 and 2005).
The former receptionist asked the HR executive to inform Tim Pearey, the firm’s chief financial officer at the time, about her experiences. It is unclear whether that message was ever relayed. Pearey did not respond to a request for comment.