[4] In June 2023, the Financial Times published an investigative report on Odey which alleged that he had sexually harassed or assaulted 13 women over the course of 25 years.
[10] His father was from a family of Yorkshire industrialists, and his grandfather George Odey, "a formidable bully", had been the Conservative MP for Beverley.
Odey was educated at Harrow School, where his father had been head boy, and graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1980 with a degree in history and economics.
[12][13] Soon after graduation, he found out that his father had huge debts, and the trustees of Hotham Hall, a 4,000-acre estate that had been in his mother's family since 1720, transferred it to him absolutely.
[14] Odey suffered large losses in 1994 when the Federal Reserve unexpectedly lifted interest rates (one of his funds lost 44 per cent of its value), but went on to thrive, for instance by foreseeing that the value of insurers would rise after the September 11 attacks on New York in 2001.
[14] According to The New York Times, Odey "came to prominence during the 2008 financial crisis when he shorted banking shares, a lucrative wager that helped him to earn almost 28 million pounds that year".
[14] He had been bearish about the position of banks for a number of years, shorting Bradford & Bingley as early as 2005, questioning the German Landesbanks and warning consistently about the dangers of debt and inflated house prices.
[18] In May 2009, Odey attracted some controversy for saying in The Times that he would leave the country to avoid paying 50% income tax.
[19] He was at the centre of further controversy in 2009 when it was suggested that he financially backed anti-EU campaigners in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty[20] while some hedge funds had taken out specific bets on the insolvency of the country in the event that the vote not be carried.
[17] In June 2017, The Daily Telegraph reported that his fund had profited from the drop in the value of the pound that resulted from a hung parliament.
[28] On 5 January 2018, The New York Times reported that Odey Asset Management had lost more than a fifth of its value in 2017, dropping around 20.5 percent.
The New York Times reported that Odey's fund's "performance has suffered heavily after he took a negative stance on the outlook for the global economy and bearish positions against shares that have not borne fruit.
[39][40] In June 2023, the Financial Times reported allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted 13 women over 25 years.
[49][50] Odey subsequently married Nichola Pease, deputy chairman of JO Hambro Capital Management and a member of one of the founding families of Barclays Bank.