Revelations of predatory acts by media mogul Harvey Weinstein helped jumpstart a global reckoning for rich and powerful men. Few expect the downfall of hedge fund manager Crispin Odey to provoke a similar watershed in the City of London.
“Odey losing his position isn’t going to change behavior,” said Zelda Perkins, a British former assistant to Weinstein who broke her non-disclosure agreement in 2017 to speak out against him. “What has to change is the system.”
In the six years since the #Metoo movement rose to prominence, companies have set up mandatory harassment courses, whistleblowing hotlines and tried to diversify. But women in the City of London say they still hesitate to report harassment or abuse for fear of being labeled a troublemaker and damaging their careers. Those who do face hurdles at every stage of the grievance process.
As the number of women who allege Odey assaulted or abused them over a period of 25 years has grown, they say they remain deeply affected by their experiences. They also warn that his June 10 ouster from the firm he founded — Odey Asset Management — is no turning point. The financial industry, they say, has a long way to go to improve the way women are treated.
“The only reason people will pay attention is because of the press attention Odey received,” said Grace Lordan, associate professor and director of the Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics. “It’s been going on for a long time, it’s been ignored and it’s a problem in the sector that when someone approaches a company with sexual harassment, they are silent, they ignore it and they get them to sign NDAs.”
The process of reporting sexual assault in the UK can be fraught.
Problems range from the treatment of whistleblowers in workplaces to a Crown Prosecution Service that is extremely cautious about bringing forward criminal cases because it is often one person’s word against another. And a Financial Conduct Authority which is, according to campaigners, too slow to investigate non-financial misconduct. The watchdog had no comment.
Two weeks ago, the Financial Times published the accounts of 13 women who accused Odey of harassment and assault, with the last incident said to have taken place in December 2021.
Odey, 64, disputes the allegations, which include crude remarks, unwanted touching and unwelcome proposals to be his mistress. He didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment and no criminal proceedings have been brought against him.
Complicit behavoir
Similar claims were made in stories published in 2021 by other news organizations, including Bloomberg News, shortly after a case that accused him of sexually assaulting a woman 20 years earlier was dismissed. When Judge Nicholas Rimmer gave his verdict, he said Odey could leave the court with his “good character intact.”
Aileen McColgan, a London barrister with a practice specialized in dealing with harassment allegations, says that misconduct continues because those around the perpetrators allow it. “Some of the very same people who are currently condemning behavior as unacceptable will have been complicit in letting people get away with it for years,” she said.
For many women in the City wanting to report misconduct, the first port of call is their company’s human resources department. But in a survey by the Chartered Management Institute in April, one in five managers said they did not speak up for fear of being dismissed as a nuisance or had seen other cases not taken seriously before.
Women can go on to settle and sign an NDA. For them it’s a way to secure a reference and stay in long-term employment. But it often means that companies can sweep bad behavior under the carpet.
The FCA whistle-blower hotline is also an option. The watchdog introduced more conduct rules for senior managers and whistleblowing after a commission set up by the government said in 2013 that financial institutions should improve standards in a broad way.
Harassment reports to the watchdog have climbed to 43 over the past five years, with 10 of them made in the year through 2022. But it has issued just five financial services banning orders for non-finance related misbehavior — each following a court conviction. And two years after opening an investigation into Odey and corporate governance at Odey Asset Management, its findings still haven’t been made public.
Few prosecutions
In the City of London, the number of sexual offenses recorded by City of London police jumped 181% to 118 in the year ended March 2022 from 42 over the same period the year before, when many people were working from home because of the pandemic.
Nationally, the police pursued just 2.9% of sexual offenses cases through to a charge in the year ended March 2022, according to the most recent Home Office data. That’s down from 3.5% a year earlier and compares with around 6% of cases for crime more generally. The number of successful court prosecutions is extremely low.
A potential route for claimants is an employment tribunal or possible personal injury claim, and the standard of proof is easier to reach in those cases as the judge only needs to decide if an incident was more likely than not to have occurred.
“If the regulators and those companies involved do not hold the individuals accountable for their conduct then it sets a precedent that this behavior is acceptable, allowing it to continue, and ultimately contributing to the creation of a toxic culture,” said Stacey Macken, a former prime broker at BNP Paribas.
While her case did not involve any allegations of sexual misconduct, Macken was one of the very few claimants in recent years to win a multi million pound payout in a court case when she showed that a male colleague was earning 25% more than she was.
Some things are changing: A bill going through Parliament would introduce a preventative duty on employers to take adequate steps to stop harassment occurring in the first place. There are more women than ever at executive committee level in FTSE 100 companies, setting a new tone. But that figure was just 27% in November 2022.
Perkins pointed to a move by the legal services regulator to consider the “scale, extent and nature of misuse” of NDAs as an indication that watchdogs are taking the response to harassment seriously.
But for Odey and the FCA it’s a different matter, she says. “Why has their response been so sluggish and why hasn’t it changed? There’s still a total culture of impunity,” Perkins said. “Until those systems are changed and regulators get some teeth, this is still going to keep on happening.”
If you’d like to share your experience of sexual harassment in the City anonymously, you can do so here.
Author: Jonathan Browning, Katherine Griffiths and Loukia Gyftopoulou
