THE City broking firm headed by Graham Wellesley, a descendant of the Duke of Wellington, has raised £14m of fresh funding despite the world market turmoil.

FrontPoint, a hedge fund part-owned by Morgan Stanley, led the fundraising by ODL Group, investing alongside two other major hedge funds, other institutions and private shareholders.

The money will be used to help ODL extend its international reach. ODL also plans to diversify into new products, such as spread-betting. At present it specialises in foreign-exchange dealing, derivatives and commodities trading.

The group acquired Bestcon-nect, an electronic-dealing service, from Dresdner Kleinwort ear-lier this year for about £5m to provide technology needed for the move into spread-betting.

Between 2004 and 2006, ODL saw its turnover rise from £6.2m to £23.5m.

Pretax profits rose from £1.1m to £7m over the same period.

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