Crispin Odey has stepped back from an investment fund focused on the Lloyd’s of London insurance market in a sign of the fallout from sexual harassment allegations against the hedge fund founder spreading to his other holdings.
Odey, 64, resigned as a director on Thursday from three firms behind Insurance Capital Partners, a provider of funds for underwriting activity in the world’s oldest insurance market, according to UK registry filings. Odey owns a roughly 11% stake in the Lincolnshire, England-based firm, which forecast underwriting capacity of £103.9 million ($133 million) for 2022, according to its 2021 full-year accounts.
Odey and representatives for Insurance Capital Partners, or ICP, didn’t answer calls or emails seeking comment.
Odey Asset Management is swiftly unraveling after the publication of a Financial Times investigation last week into its founder’s treatment of women over a 25-year period that included multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault. The London-based firm said on Saturday that it had fully divorced itself from its founder and on Thursday said it is in advanced discussions to transfer its funds and many employees to other asset managers.
Odey bought a stake in ICP during 2006 as part of a group of investors that included Jonathan Marland, a founding director of insurer Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group and a former Conservative Party treasurer. British landowner Nicholas Bacon is a director alongside Marland of the ICP firms Odey resigned from, the filings show.
Marland said the 2006 deal provided a chance to allocate capital alongside friends and provide access to a managed portfolio of insurance investments, according to the Independent newspaper.
ICP deals with about a dozen Lloyd’s of London firms for its investments, including Hiscox Ltd., Beazley Plc and Asta, according to its 2021 accounts. It reported total income of £3.2 million from £97.7 million of gross premiums written during that year, when it also paid out a £4 million dividend to its owners, the filing show.
Odey became a director of ICP’s holding company in 2006, making him one of its longest-serving in the role, while he’s also among the firm’s biggest shareholders.
Timothy Shenton, a chartered accountant and the only other named director, typically signs off accounts for ICP Holdings — the parent company of the group — and he holds the most management roles across the group’s firms, according to the filings. Odey, Marland and Bacon each held the same-sized stake in ICP Holdings in late 2022, while Shenton isn’t listed as a shareholder.
Odey originally held a 10% stake in ICP’s holding company but boosted it to the current level between 2016 and 2017 when one director died and another stepped down and exited the business. He’s received more than £1 million in dividends since becoming an ICP shareholder, with almost half that sum coming in 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
–With assistance from Nishant Kumar.
Photograph: The Lloyd’s of London building in the City of London. Photo credit: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg
Topics Excess Surplus Lloyd's
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