The UK’s financial regulator should reveal the extent of its probe into Odey Asset Management following a string of allegations of sexual assault by the firm’s founder, according to the head of Parliament’s Treasury Committee.
Harriett Baldwin’s call for more information from the Financial Conduct Authority comes after a week of turmoil at the asset manager, which has since severed links with its founder after clients and banks cut ties. The turmoil was triggered by the publication of a Financial Times investigation into Crispin Odey’s treatment of women over a 25-year period last Thursday.
“Culture in financial services, and the experiences of women in the industry, have been ongoing concerns of the Treasury Committee,” Baldwin wrote in the letter Wednesday. “The FT paints a deeply negative picture of one powerful individual’s conduct regarding those two Committee priorities and is potentially damaging to the reputation of the entire sector.”
Committee has asked a series of questions about the regulator’s supervision of the firm, Odey as well as the FCA’s wider work on non-financial misconduct, according to the letter.
--With assistance from Leonard Kehnscherper.
