FirstFT: Six more women say Crispin Odey harassed or assaulted them

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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 six women include two former receptionists and an intern at Odey Asset Management, with the earliest of the new allegations dating back to 1985 when an interior designer, then 26, said she was violently assaulted at Odey’s home in London.

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.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:

• Central bankers: European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde speaks at the 23rd Rencontres Économiques d’Aix-en-Provence forum in France today, with her British counterpart Andrew Bailey speaking at the same event on Sunday. Lagarde’s deputy, Luis de Guindos, gives an address at King’s College London today.

• Economic data: The UK has the Halifax house price index, Germany publishes its May industrial production index and Canada and the US release employment surveys for last month today.

• Biden in Europe: The US president starts a two-day visit to the UK on Sunday that includes meetings with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles III, before he travels to Lithuania for the Nato summit.

• Companies: Hydrogen company Thyssenkrupp Nucera makes its stock market debut in Frankfurt, while Liontrust Asset Management shareholders vote on its acquisition of Swiss rival GAM today.

Five more top stories

1. US borrowing costs touched a 16-year high yesterday, prompting a global sell-off in stocks and bonds. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index closed down 2.3 per cent, its biggest one-day drop since March, as strong jobs data in the US intensified expectations of further interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve. Read the full story.

2. Twitter has threatened to sue Meta over Threads, alleging it stole the company’s trade secrets when creating the new rival social media app. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said yesterday more than 30mn people had signed up less than 24 hours after Threads’ launch. Here’s what Twitter’s lawyer wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg.

• Opinion: It feels like 2006 all over again, writes Tim Bradshaw. A new social network has set the internet alight with chatter about the possibilities.

3. Taiwan has rejected China’s claim that it could easily sink the US Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier strike group after a Beijing-backed institution published a paper about a war game. The paper claimed the simulation showed an attack with 24 hypersonic anti-ship missiles could sink a flotilla led by the USS Gerald R Ford “with certainty”.

4. US regulators have approved the first drug shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, paving the way for millions of Americans to access the treatment. Lecanemab, now known by the brand name Leqembi, was developed by Japanese drugmaker Eisai and US biotech company Biogen to treat the neurodegenerative disease.

5. Delaying the London terminus for Britain’s new HS2 high-speed railway line will cost at least £200mn, the House of Commons public accounts committee has warned. The MPs also said the budget for the project, which had already suffered delays and large cost overruns, was “unrealistic” from the beginning. Read more from the cross-party group’s report.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

The Big Read

Cobalt, the silver metal so abundant in the Democratic Republic of Congo that miners can dig it out with basic tools, is essential for the world’s clean energy transition. Demand is expected to triple by 2035, mainly for electric-vehicle batteries. But the small-scale miners fuelling this transition through “artisanal mining” — a name that belies a rudimentary and hazardous practice — face extreme danger and exploitation.

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The riots in France, spurred by the death of a teenager of North African descent during a traffic stop, show just how entrenched inequalities have become between immigrants and those born in the country, writes chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch. Despite claims that France is race-blind, the data tells a different story.

Take a break from the news

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Additional contributions by Miles Ellingham and Benjamin Wilhelm