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British Hedge-Fund Boss Cleared of Indecent Assault Charge

The multimillionaire admitted he’d made a pass at a colleague in 1998, but was found not guilty anyway.

British hedge-fund manager and multimillionaire Crispin Odey has been acquitted of indecent assault of a junior banker who accused him of groping her shirt and reaching up her skirt during a meeting in the late 1990s. The plaintiff in the case alleged that after Odey had asked her for a drink in 1998, she’d brought some files to discuss, only for Odey to launch towards her like “an octopus.” The hedge-fund executive admitted he’d tried to get his colleague in bed but called the assault charge “a slur.” District Judge Nicholas Rimmer of the Westminster magistrates court found him not guilty, saying the accuser has a “natural tendency to embellish and exaggerate,” which made her “look like an unreliable historian.”