Bloomsbury ward councillor Rishi Madlani may be feeling some heat in between knocking on people’s doors on the election trail.
As chair of Camden’s £1.25bn pension fund committee he is all too aware of press reports of a high court injunction blocking Reuters from publishing information about Brevan Howard, one of Europe’s largest hedge funds.
Reuters wanted to make public the confidential information Brevan Howard had sent to its clients — which includes Camden Council. We don’t know what this sensitive information is as the hearing was held in private.
But the FT’s global investment editor Miles Johnson commented on the case saying: “While the closed-door nature of the injunction makes it impossible to know the details, the chilling effect it has on the freedom of the UK press to report on an industry ever more reliant on public money for its profits is worrying.”
Johnson noted that “Camden’s overall hedge fund investments lost the pension fund £2.38m, while it paid its managers, Brevan Howard and BlueCrest, fees of £1.06m and £1.26m respectively.”
Reuters is appealing the decision of the high court and Camden is considering its pension investment options.