Odey Asset Management

What motivates a hedge fund manager to continue busting his ass to churn out profits year after year, once he's already amassed a fortune most people can't even fathom, when he could easily pack it all in and live more than comfortably without ever working another day? For some, it's the thrill. For others, it's the trophy's wife's shoe habit. For Crispin Odey, it's the chickens. The Odey Asset Management founder (and sausage brand ambassador)'s got a mess of high-maintenance ones and earlier this year, had architects draft blueprints of a "Palladian-style" mansion he intended to build them (seen at left), replete with a grey zinc roof, "pediments, cornice, architrave, and frieze in English oak," and columns "hewn from the finest grey Forest of Dean standstone." After finishing 2011 down 20.3%, things were no doubt more than a little tense over in Herefordshire, where questions of whether or not construction would have to be halted, or if they'd have to make the switch to [whispers] generic-brand feed. Certainly a moment of panic swept over Odey each day when he returned home, wondering as he turned the knob if he'd be entering an empty house, the chickens gone and a note explaining they couldn't do this anymore on the fridge. Ran off with the general contractor because what was the point of shacking up with a money manger if the money wasn't there? Luckily for all parties involved, it won't have to come to that; according to Bloomberg Markets' annual ranking of the top performing hedge funds, performing under pressure is one of Odey's specialities.

Crispin Odey is the founder of Odey Asset Management, a sausage brand ambassador, and a guy who unwittingly made fellow hedge fund manager Philip Falcone's life* a living hell when he pulled this stunt: ...Odey has upped the ante for poultry accommodation – he’s building a temple for his chickens for which the stone alone costs £130,000. The Palladian-style chicken house, designed by Christopher Smallwood Architects, has won planning approval from the Forest of Dean District Council, and will sit on the hillside above Eastbach Court, Odey’s Grade II-listed home. The temple’s roof – adorned with an Anthemia statuette – will be fashioned in grey zinc; the pediments, cornice, architrave and frieze are in English oak; and the columns, pilasters and rusticated stone plinth are being hewn from finest grey Forest of Dean sandstone. Naturally, the doors will be painted in the Odey Asset Management founder’s favourite Hague Blue – “to match the doors around Eastbach Court”, according to the plans...“The temple will be a lovely place when it is finished at the end of the year,” Odey said from a grouse moor. “The chickens will be grand.” Nice for the chickens, but obviously this gesture makes Phil look like a deadbeat by comparison, as he merely allows his pet pig Wilbur to live in his apartment and has never even suggested getting her her own place. You can bet someone will be printing a copy of the article and placing it prominently on top of someone's morning paper, and god help that someone if he doesn't get on the horn about building her the god damn Taj Mahal, ASAP. Crispin Odey’s chickens come home to (a luxury) roost [Telegraph via FT Alphaville] *And the lives of all deep-pocketed animal owners.