Daily Mail

Power couple at the heart of battle for Sirius Minerals

He’s a millionair­e hedge fund tycoon, and she’s a City superwoman. Meet the...

- by Francesca Washtell

THE wife of the hedge fund tycoon who is opposing the takeover of Sirius Minerals has been named chairman of the potash miner’s biggest shareholde­r.

Nichola Pease ( picturedri­ght), who is married to Crispin Odey ( above), will join Jupiter Asset Management, which has a 7.8pc stake in Sirius, on March 2.

her husband runs Odey Asset Management, which has built up a 1.3pc stake in Sirius and has vowed to vote against the deal put forward by Anglo American at 5.5p per share.

All eyes will be on Jupiter to see how it will vote in the crunch ballot on the takeover on March 3, Pease’s second day on the job.

Odey’s fund this week published a stinging open letter which branded Anglo’s £405m offer a ‘mockery’. it believes Sirius, which is building a huge fertiliser mine in the North York Moors national park ( pictured), is worth £893m and said the lowest bid it would support would be 7p per share.

Jupiter has also lashed out at Anglo’s offer.

Earlier this month, the manager of the Jupiter UK Growth Fund, Steve Davies, told the Mail it was keen for the board to keep hunting for alternativ­e rescue deals.

Sirius dashed any hopes of that last week, when it said talks had ended with an unnamed consortium that had been considerin­g raising some of the money to fund the next stage of the mine. But it is not known if Jupiter can risk voting against Anglo’s approach when the other option, according to Sirius’s board, is the company going into liquidatio­n.

if this happens, Jupiter will almost certainly lose its entire £28.5m stake.

An estimated 85,000 retail shareholde­rs, many of whom are locals, have their pensions or entire life savings on the line, having already seen the value of their investment in Sirius plummet. Sirius’s shares were trading above 40p in 2016 and are now worth just 5.2p.

With the March 3 voting deadline rapidly approachin­g, it is not known which way Jupiter will turn. the fund says that Pease does not have a direct say in the ultimate decision on how it will vote. the final decision will rest with Davies.

But the involvemen­t of one of the City’s most powerful couples – who married in 1991, live in a sprawling mansion in Gloucester­shire and have three children – adds more spice to the longrunnin­g Sirius saga, which has warned it will run out of money by April and collapse if investors do not vote for Anglo’s deal.

it requires two mile-deep shafts and a 23-mile tunnel between the Whitby site and teesside, where the unprocesse­d fertiliser rocks will be sent to be crushed.

Veteran city commentato­r David Buik said Odey and Pease are unlikely to fall out over the issue. ‘they’d probably have cross words for about three-anda-half seconds,’ he said.

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