Politics will have to wait for Crispin Odey.
“I know my limitations and others know them better than me!” the hedge fund manager said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News, downplaying a Financial News report that said he was looking to get more active in politics. “It is not true that I am planning to enter politics.”
The London-based money manager told Financial News in an interview that he was so unimpressed with the British political class that he feels compelled to play a bigger part in public life, though he was unsure what form that would take.
Odey, a supporter of the U.K. campaign to leave the European Union, when asked by Bloomberg News about his plans for a life in politics, said those comments were “small talk about how politics was getting difficult to read.”
The manager has frequently used his investor letters to warn of widespread market chaos that has yet to materialize and criticize politicians and central bank policies. Last month, he said underperforming banks are starting to resemble department stores that failed to reinvent themselves, while in 2016 he warned that U.K. stocks could plummet 80 percent.
Odey, whose main hedge fund is recovering this year from three successive years of losses, hasn’t made any donation to political campaigns for 18 months, Financial News reported.
Over the years, Odey has donated at least 1.33 million pounds ($1.7 million), including 655,000 pounds to the Leave Campaign in June 2016, and contributions to the U.K. Independance Party and the Conservative Party, according to filings with U.K.’s Electoral Commission.
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