Lehman nemesis Einhorn offloads F&C stake

David Einhorn, the US hedge fund manager who publicly questioned the health of Lehman Brothers before its collapse, has offloaded the majority of his stake in F&C.

Einhorn's Greenlight Capital, which manages $6.5bn of assets, had a 3.4% stake in the UK asset manager, but has cut this back to just 0.4% over the past week.

News of Einhorn's disposal comes as activist investor Sherborne Investors increased its stake in the group 14.6% from 11.3%.

Einhorn, who set up his hedge fund with under $1m of capital in 1996, was heavily criticised in the media for his anti-Lehman stance in early 2008, after making a number of speeches questioning the validity of Lehman's reporting.

Greenlight, which never disclosed how much it made out of the Lehman short, generated an average 25% annual return from 1996 to 2007.