'Beckham of the City' who preyed on banks gave Tories £30,000

A hedge fund high-flyer who made a killing from the financial crash has donated £30,000 to the Tories.

Crispin Odey, nicknamed the 'David Beckham of the City' for his success in the money markets, raked in a fortune by short-selling shares in British banks.

His gift, handed over in July, is the latest in a series from so-called City 'wolves' seeking to bankroll David Cameron's bid for Downing Street.

Labour MPs condemned the Tory leader for benefiting at the expense of the economic downturn.

'Only this week David Cameron's shadow health secretary was telling us that recession was good for us - perhaps this is what he meant,' said backbencher Stephen Pound. 'Clearly some of the Tories' friends are making large sums of money out of the downturn.'

Mr Odey, 49, an Old Harrovian, who lives in a £3million home in Chelsea with his wife and three children, pocketed £28million from the credit crunch. His company, Odey Asset Management, made a fortune betting that the price of Bradford & Bingley and HBOS shares would fall.

He and his 47-year-old wife Nichola Pease, another City supremo and a former director of Northern Rock, are known as 'the Posh and Becks of the City'.

It is reckoned that the couple have built a fortune of more than £300million. They have close links with Tory party treasurer Michael Spencer.

The gift was revealed in the latest political donations list published by the Electoral Commission.

This year it was revealed the Tories had received hundreds of thousands of pounds from hedge fund managers who had made millions by predicting that the value of bank shares would plummet.

Sourced from an article by Ian Dury, Mail Online.

Not all bad news then.