111: Footies #5: The Challenging Mr Odey

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Page 94, The Private Eye Podcast.

Hello, and welcome back to page 94. My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and here we are, the penultimate shortlist D for this year's Paul Foot Award, talking about the story that's brought them here.

I don't need to do any more waffle. If you've been listening, you'll have heard four of these intros already.
Let's get on and hear Shortlist D number five.

I'm Paul Carana Galizia, I'm a reporter at Tortos. I'm Antonia Cundy, and I'm a reporter at the Financial Times.

So, the story that brought us onto the Paul Ford Award shortlist was an investigation into the financier Crispin Odie, who is a larger-than-life figure in the city of London.

He founded one of the city's oldest hedge fund firms. He was known as a maverick, the sort of bastion of the old school.

And we reported in June last year a story that detailed 13 women's allegations against Odie of sexual misconduct, so sexual harassment and sexual assault.

So Chris Binodi started his hedge fund company, Odie Asset Management, in the early 90s.

And for many years

he developed a reputation of being a really big risk taker and also being very outspoken, not just on the economy, but on politics. So he

supported individual politicians, but also causes like Brexit. So he became quite divisive but he was also extremely successful as a fund manager.
So his funds returned enormous sums of money.

He himself

was

the kind of person who'd feature in the Sunday Times rich list quite regularly. Right.
And I mean I think you said in the FT story that he was worth about 800 million pounds.

Is that approximately right?

It's yo-yoed

because

he also had a reputation for being a risk-taker. So he'd make these massive bets, and sometimes that won him, as Paul says, a huge amount of money.
Other times it had pretty devastating losses.

But so the largest amount that his firm altogether managed was at one point 13 billion.

At the time we wrote the story, I think it was around 4 billion.

And so we should get into the story now, because I believe so that chronologically it started with a podcast that you made, Paul. Is that right? For Tortoise? That's right.

It started in a really, a really roundabout way. So

it was September 2022

that The Times ran a brief news piece about Chris Binodi hosting Quasi Quarteng for lunch at Odi's house in Chelsea. So a private lunch.

a huge fund manager and the then business secretary who at that point everyone thought would be the chancellor under Listras.

So that seemed like a story, but but a very different kind of story. So a story about influencing government policy or getting inside information on government policy.

And that was the kind of job as a reporter.

You know, what happened at that lunch,

who might know, who does he speak to, who does he socialize with.

And very early on, I was introduced to a woman who knew Chris Binodi socially

and who claimed to me that many years ago

he

sexually assaulted her. So that was the first allegation

of his behavior that I had heard.

Quite quickly I heard other allegations that were similar of sexual misconduct against him.

And so the story changed and became much more about his conduct. So allegations he faced of assault and harassment.

And we published that story in December 2022.

And Antonio, it then came to the attention of the FT and to you and to your colleague Madison Marriage, who Pulford Watchers will remember some years ago with her story about the President's Club.

So, tell us about how the FT came to be involved and how you started working on this. Yeah, absolutely.

So, I mean, I can't speak for Madison, but she had done the asset management beat at the FT before, so she'd always been aware of Crispin Odie as a figure.

It had come to her attention in 2021 when he faced

a criminal charge of indecent assault that he was acquitted of. At roughly the same time, the Sunday Times happened to write a story about one woman's allegations against him, which he denied.

Bloomberg wrote a story about a handful of women's allegations about him, which she also denied. And then in 2022, Paul did this podcast.

I think it had been something that Madison had been meaning to look into for a while.

And then, separately, I had a call and it came about in another similar to Paul sort of roundabout way, and that I was talking to a source on a different Me Too themed story.

And she sort of said, No, you know, I never had an experience in that industry, but I did once have this experience, and it was someone who also knew OD socially.

So, that was the first allegation that I became aware of, and then quickly discovered others as we contacted other women who had worked at OD asset management and social connections, professional connections, etc.

Yeah.

These stories in journalistic terms are interesting because they require such care.

Frequently when the accused person, as OD does, denies all the allegations made against them, you need a great deal of care not only with the sort of stacking up of the story in factual terms, but also in terms of protecting your sources, making sure they are well looked after, that they're comfortable, that

they know what you're doing, so that you can help them to tell their story.

What were the challenges there in terms of this particular story?

Yeah, I mean, they are huge.

So currently, Odie has issued a libel claim against the FT,

which he did last week. Is that just before the one-year

deadline in which you're allowed

up to a year after a piece is published, you're allowed to sue over it. And he has just done that.
Yeah, so you have a one-year limitation.

He has just issued a claim, which doesn't mean he's yet served us with the claim, so he's not actually technically yet suing us, but it's the sort of precursor to saying I reserve my right to do so.

And it gives him another four months to decide if he does want to sue us.

That's the claim for libel,

defamation, and slander, as he refutes the allegations and says they've caused him harm. But essentially, that possibility is always in the back of your mind.

Well, it's not in the back of your mind, it's in the forefront of your mind when you're reporting these stories. And so

what we ask of the women who are going to make very serious allegations to meet the FT's and Tortoise's

editorial demands, we ask them to do a huge amount.

They have to provide corroborating evidence. They have to provide witness statements.
There's a huge amount of kind of behind the scenes.

There is this

additional difficulty in that you're dealing with very sensitive allegations. So they're very private, they're very difficult for people to face and for people to talk about.

And it requires asking sources to revisit things they've often had to shut out of their minds because they say they've found them very traumatic.

And you have a real duty of care to sources like that. And

relationships with sources in these stories take months to develop

and require a lot of attention, rightly. And it's very hard balancing that because you basically have to be being as rigorous as the police if they're investigating something.

But you have to be as kind of gentle and sensitive as

even more sensitive than the police would be.

Well, I think the police is sometimes famously not so

sensitive. But yeah, you know, as sensitive and gentle as a therapist or a friend.
But you're also testing the evidence, but you're also testing the evidence, yeah.

And so to do those two things at the same time is

hard. Because you'll you'll obviously often come across

that you're you're really doubting a person's account and you know you're asking them to speak to you about this very difficult thing, but then you you have to ask them, you know, what time were you at this place?

Did you really tell a friend about it? Who is that friend will they talk to me

um

what else do you remember

um why did you react in the way you say you reacted

so it's it's a pretty rigorous exercise and i

there's a kind of special special difficulty with these stories in that um

Very often you don't have documentary evidence like you might have in a story about fraud or corruption. Because, I mean, so many of of these things are happening behind closed doors.

Yes, and it's often exactly, and it's often two people alone in a room or wherever.

People's natural reaction is not to, as you put it, Paul, to take a note of

that. You know, that's not, most people don't think in a formal and legalistic way about this stuff, especially if something incredibly upsetting has just happened to them.
Yes, and

the allegations are serious, and

again, OD

has always denied them very strenuously.

You know, it comes to a point where

you have to look at the kind of balance of material you have

and then make a decision on whether to publish.

But you did take the decision to publish, and

as I ask all of the shortlistees, what happened next? Yeah, a bit of a whirlwind.

So we published the story on a Thursday morning. That weekend,

Chris Binodi was removed from his partnership, the firm he founded,

which was a significant, very, very significant step

because it was his own business. And initially, he said he was going to fight that,

but we haven't heard anything of that since.

And then, in kind of very quick succession, I mean, within hours, some kind of key banking partners had cut ties with the company, which is pretty difficult for a hedge fund to ride out.

And then, over the following days and weeks, it just became increasingly untenable for ODI asset management, even without its founder, you know,

who had the negative press,

even without him to kind of continue as a going concern. And so essentially,

yeah, banking partners and clients started trying to pull their money, and the firm

has wound down since. Fund managers have moved to rivals, and it is winding up its business.
So it was a pretty swift implosion. Seven more women ended up coming forward.
OD

denies their accusations, we understand, through the libel claim, but in fact, the second article didn't respond to our requests for comments.

And the 20th woman, he did actually admit that he had grabbed her breasts, but said it was because he'd been given anesthetic at the dentist that day. So he denied it was misconduct.

I mean, that's a perennial risk of going to the dentist, isn't it? Yeah.

But yeah, so seven more women came forward and said that they'd had similar experiences, again, allegations of sexual assault and harassment, and that increased the alleged time span from it had previously been, I think it was three decades.

And that this is what took it back to 1985

and up to as recently as 2021.

So the court case Antonia mentioned, which was a criminal case of indecent assault,

predated the latest allegation of assault we heard by about a year.

So in summary, the allegation is that Chris Benoudi was acquitted of assault and then a year or so later allegedly sexually assaulted another woman.

His firm put him under a sort of final written warning for his behaviour around female employees, and he was found to have breached that policy.

Apart from the police, there are regulators in this industry

who don't appear to have

the role of the FCA has always been really interesting in this story.

So we heard very early on that the Financial Conduct Authority was investigating ODI asset management for its handling of sexual harassment complaints, internal complaints against Chris Binoti.

Before we did the podcast, we learned after publication that the firm was under the close supervision of the FCA,

all the while further complaints were made against his behaviour.

He, as an individual, is still under investigation by the FCA.

After OD asset management fell apart, the FCA

released a statement saying it will now be closing its investigation into the OD asset management.

But the FCA does have a duty to investigate sexual misconduct, which it considers part of misconduct generally in the market.

And I think the thing about them closing the investigation into OD asset management,

which

the women we spoke to who said that they are victims and who are employees of the firm,

I think in the end, out of 20 women who came to us with allegations, 13 of them were employees of OD asset management. And what they find very galling about the FCA dropping that investigation is that

they, you know, and our reporting found there was a culture of complicity at the firm and that you know senior executives were, if not quite covering up, but aware of Odie's behaviour and not doing anything to stop it.

So, yeah, I think the victims find that pretty disappointing from the FCA. Of course.

Because even if the firm has wound down, there are people in positions of power who didn't challenge it, who've gone on to possibly do, or may go on to do other jobs.

But yeah,

the firm obviously says it has strong grievance and harassment procedures in place.

Well, I can appreciate that you have both been very careful in terms of what you're able to say, given the prospect of a lawsuit.

But I think I am able to say congratulations on a fantastic and meticulously reported story. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you.
There you have it. Thank you so much for listening.

We hope you've enjoyed that little insight into the world of investigative journalism. There will be another one of these tomorrow.

If you just can't wait for that, then feel free to subscribe to the magazine instead, private-foni.co.uk. Thanks for listening.
We'll We'll be back again shortly with another one.

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