London | Crispin Odey urged a woman he groped at the headquarters of his hedge fund to downplay the incident to the financial watchdog while it considered whether he should retain his regulatory approval as a “fit and proper person”.

The woman, who is the 20th to come forward to the Financial Times with claims of sexual misconduct against the financier, said she was assaulted by Mr Odey in 2005 when she was an employee at his hedge fund firm. She told Odey Asset Management’s longstanding lawyers about the incident during an internal inquiry in 2021, the findings of which were also shared with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

Financial Times