EMILY PRESCOTT: Hedge fund boss Crispin Odey stuns pals as he plans to wed his third wife after number two gets to keep £150k Cluckingham Palace
Multi-millionaire hedge fund boss Crispin Odey says he’s ‘been through the wars in every way’ thanks to a court trial last year in which he cleared his name of indecent assault charges.
Its effects were far-reaching, with the fallout even costing Odey his marriage to City investor Nichola Pease, 61. He admitted she was ‘publicly humiliated’ by allegations that in 1998 he launched himself on a junior banker like ‘an octopus’.
But now I can reveal there’s happier news for the tycoon, who is one of the City’s most colourful characters.
A year on from his divorce from Nichola, the 63-year-old is planning a hush-hush wedding this month after finding love with fellow financier Diana Vitkova, 38
The couple, who live at Crispin’s £4.5 million London home, will tie the knot at Chelsea Town Hall. But he is keen to keep the event low key, telling me: ‘It is a very small wedding and a very nice one, just friends’
A year on from his divorce from Nichola, the 63-year-old is planning a hush-hush wedding this month after finding love with fellow financier Diana Vitkova, 38.
The couple, who live at Crispin’s £4.5 million London home, will tie the knot at Chelsea Town Hall. But he is keen to keep the event low key, telling me: ‘It is a very small wedding and a very nice one, just friends.’ Hopefully, it’s a case of third time lucky for Odey, who was briefly married to Prudence Murdoch, eldest daughter of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, in the 1980s before he wed Nichola in 1991.
The couple had three children and were dubbed the Posh and Becks of the City due to their high profile and huge fortune – estimated at £825 million in 2020.
I understand Nichola knows of the wedding but will not be going. ‘These things are never that amicable,’ Odey says.
However, there is some consolation for her in what was tipped to be one of Britain’s most expensive divorce cases.
As part of the settlement last September, Odey tells me that Nichola will keep their mansion in Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean, which includes Cluckingham Palace, a £150,000 Palladian coop that Odey had built to house his chickens.
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