Simon Sadler, who hails from Blackpool, rose to become the envy of Asia’s financial scene, and returned in triumph to rescue the local football club. Is his “long hot streak” now over? Jane Lewis reports
When Simon Sadler bought Blackpool FC in 2019, he was described by The Guardian as a “local-boy-done-good”. That’s something of an understatement. Sadler was by then the doyen of one of Hong Kong’s largest and most successful hedge funds – having grown his fund, Segantii Capital, from a $26m tiddler to a $6.2bn giant, with offices in London, New York and Dubai, in little more than a decade.
If his “long hot streak” was “once the envy of Asia’s financial scene”, Sadler’s fall has been equally dramatic, says Bloomberg. In May, it was announced that the once-mighty fund would be wound down – and funds returned to investors – after the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) started criminal proceedings against Sadler, and a former Segantii trader, Daniel La Rocca, on suspicion of insider dealing. The alleged offence, which both deny, dates back to a 2017 “block trade” involving the Hong Kong-listed retailer, Esprit.
“This is a big deal. It’s rare to see criminal charges of this magnitude brought against a prominent fund manager,” a local industry figure told the Financial Times. If convicted, Sadler could face up to seven years in jail. For years, he was the go-to middleman for investment banks that wanted discreetly to sell large blocks of shares “off-market” to avoid depressing a company’s share price. Having become one of the biggest players in Asia, Segantii’s reputation soon spread to trading floors on Wall Street and the City: clients included Bank of America, Citi and Goldman Sachs. But the spectacular collapse of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management in 2021 brought the workings of this market under the spotlight of regulatory scrutiny. Even before the insider-dealing charges, Segantii’s business was suffering as risk-averse banks withdrew.
Sadler’s reputation in Hong Kong, which he made his home, was mixed, notes Bloomberg. Former colleagues and associates describe him as “hard-charging, hot-tempered and foul-mouthed”. He was renowned for running Segantii “with an iron grip”. But the firm’s Hong Kong office reeked of nostalgia for home. Sadler combined a belief in Chinese geomancy (he had a fengshui master visit r
