Fund boss Odey gives himself a £28m payday

Profits just disclosed by his Odey Asset Management has revealed that the firm made £55 million in the year to 5 April.

After Odey's massive payday, the other £27 million was distributed among his 11 partners in the firm.

Odey has made it plain that he is no fan of the British banking sector. But he still caused a storm this summer, when it emerged during a Financial Services Authority clampdown on short-sellers that his fund managers were shorting the struggling High Street building society-turned-bank, Bradford & Bingley.

Short-sellers are investors who bet that a company's shares are going to fall. The FSA clampdown had been aimed at outing rogue traders who, according to the regulators, have been short-selling during rights issues to make a profit from destabilising companies' share prices.

At various times in the last few months, Odey is also believed to have been significantly short of the Halifax banking group HBOS and several other UK and Irish banks.

He is reckoned to be one of the biggest winners from the credit crunch having seen the downturn coming before most other market-watchers.

Last summer, before the debt crisis fully emerged and just before the US Federal Reserve delivered a shock halfpoint cut in interest rates, Odey was reported as predicting the global economy would crash into its worst financial crisis in 35 years.

"If central banks cut rates now we are back in the world of 1973," he said at the time.

Odey, 49, is not only one of London's most successful hedge fund managers but also a member of the capital's financial aristocracy.

He has been jokingly referred to as one half of the Posh'n'Becks of the City - he is married to Nichola Pease, a fund manager and scion of one of the Barclays banking families.

Pease was also one of the directors of Northern Rock who were vilified for not properly having overseeen the bust bank. Previously married to Rupert Murdoch's oldest daughter Prudence, Odey also counts Barclays chief John Varley among his in-laws.

Operating out of a wood-panelled Georgian office in Mayfair, from where he goes to work from one of the smartest addresses in Chelsea, Odey and his wife Pease are reckoned to be between them worth more than £300 million from their stakes in Odey Asset Management and at her firm JO Hambro Capital, an offshoot of the Hambro banking empire.

According to latest figures reported, Odey Asset Management has £2.6 billion of funds under management and tripled its revenues to nearly £65 million last year.

Its soaraway success story is in stark contrast to the listed hedge fund RAB Capital. Last week RAB Capital saw profits halve and bonuses slashed in a year in which it lost tens of millions, betting on a recovery at Pease's old firm Northern Rock.