Wirecard critics shut down hedge fund

A hedge fund run by the analysts that spotted potential fraud at German payments firm Wirecard years before its collapse have closed their fund due to its small size, City AM can reveal.

Neil Campling and Toby Clothier, founders and managers of the Chameleon Global Master fund, have returned cash to investors and closed the fund only a year and a half after it began.

In a statement, Clothier credited the fund’s closure to its small size, as it only brought in around $2.7m (£2.1m), according to filings.

The duo gained notoriety in the City after working together at Mirabaud Securities in 2019, when they became suspicious of activity around Wirecard and took a large short position on its stock.

The firm then fell into scandal after it was accused of fraud.

Campling and Clothier then launched the Chameleon Global Master fund as part of Ronit Capital in May last year, searching for a variety of thematic areas to invest in

These included UK mergers and acquisitions, the largest theme in the fund, gold and gold miners, and finding companies with a “funny smell” like the duo did with Wirecard.

Speaking to City AM at the start of the year, the managers said one of their prime suspects had been companies focused on AI, due to the massive hype around the technology’s claimed potential to add trillions in value to the economy.

While the managers acknowledged its benefit in some areas, they argued that it often was acting as “a glorified thesaurus”, with the current excitement around it comparable to the dot-com bubble.

“Is it going to add $40 trillion of economic value over the next ten years, which is what is priced in? No.” Clothier said.

Since the fund’s closure, Campling has taken up a job as European M&A correspondent at Bloomberg this month, while Clothier is in discussions to launch a new hedge fund with Ronit.

The manager is incubating a Global Best Ideas fund based on the same thematic principles as Chameleon, with just 10-15 stocks, targeting a return of 10-40 per cent annually.

Clothier told City AM that his portfolio had already jumped by 11.4 per cent in September, with investors currently being approached.

This article has been amended to include further details on Clothier’s hedge fund