James Caan and Crispin Odey - The ‘dream team’?

Monday, 3rd November 2008 13:06 - by Resident IFA

It appears that James Caan, of Dragon’s Den fame, has pulled off a coup in securing Crispin Odey’s talents for his recently-founded INSYNERGY Investment Management venture. The fund, only launched on October 31st, already has a Morningstar (An independent quality rating company) 3-star assessment…undoubtedly Mr.Odey’s reputation preceding him. Quite impressive. I had a look at the fund fact-sheet, perturbed by the fact that I could not see any information on charges. This said, I ‘Googled’ it and found a 5% initial charge and 1.5% annual management charge (AMC) - not terrible, but not cheap either. Undoubtedly, you pay for such a good track record as Mr.Odey’s. I would be interested to see the Total Expense Ratio (TER), being the full annual charge after miscellaneous costs (such as Trustees fees) have been taken account of. The Insynergy Odey fund is unconstrained and will hold 50-100 stocks across five to 10 themes. This is an interesting development as it provides retail investors with access to Odey’s 'Long-only' strategy (see below), previously reserved for high net-worth and institutional clients. The fund appears in the Investment Management Association (IMA) ‘Global Growth’ sector if you fancy tracking its progress. I am interested to see how it fares and how Crispin Odey’s talents translate to running a retail fund. This is especially interesting when you consider it is a fund whose goal is to hold onto shares from companies it believes in and believes will grow in value over time - a ‘Long-only’ strategy. I say this as Mr.Odey recently had his fair share of brickbats for making millions in employing the opposite strategy…temporary bets on Bank shares falling (‘Shorting’ that sector). INSYNERGY also launched a Sharia UK Growth fund on October 31st. All-in-all, two very interesting funds to kick-off with. I would not bet against the combination of Crispin Odey’s track record, an interesting niche fund (if you can call it that, with approximately two million Muslim’s living in the UK), and James Caan’s Midas touch/marketing nous seeing the cash come flooding in! Until next time…