Feras Al-Chalabi, manager of the $360 million pan-European fund at Odey Asset Management, is set to benefit from a new incentive plan to hold on to talent – namely, give them a share in the business, Financial News reports. The plan, according to Citywire, appears to be the brainchild of David Stewart, the recently installed new head of Odey, who wanted to plug the brain drain that most notably afflicted the firm last year when one of its stars, Hugh Hendry, left to try and shine on his own. According to Citywire, Stewart expects to implement an employee-share ownership plan that would require the staffer to remain at the firm for three years, a scheme that he says was one of the conditions of his taking the job. “It is something I insisted on... because I do believe in empowering the key deliverers in the business.”
The move comes as firm founder Crispin Odey is beginning to turn over the mantle of the business to “the younger generation,” he told Financial News. There may be another reason for the plan, however: FN says, under U.K. inheritance rules, it will be more cost-efficient for Odey’s beneficiaries to receive an ongoing business rather than just the assets.
In a related development, Odey the firm is spreading its wings to Asia for the first time with the launch of an Asia ex-Japan hedge fund, to be managed by Raj Chaudhary, a European analyst who wanted to try his hand at the new market. Odey plans to roll out the fund slowly, however, turning away outside investors for now, to see how well it does in the current Asian climate. Says Stewart in his Citywire interview, “I don’t particularly want to launch it until the markets have cooled down. Asia is too hot at the moment and what I don’t want is hot money.”