Florian Homm is a man not easily overlooked. At 6ft 6in, he literally overshadows most of the competition. One of the hedge fund world’s best-known figures, he is also among its most colourful — and possibly the luckiest.

He still sports the scars from a violent run-in with armed robbers in Caracas last year. The co-founder of Absolute Capital Management, who resigned yesterday, was shot by gunmen on a motorbike while travelling on holiday with friends.

The bandits robbed him and his friends while their car waited at a red light. He was punished with a bullet in the spine for not handing over his gold Rolex.

Mr Homm’s no-nonsense investment approach, in which he has taken stakes in companies as diverse as Borussia Dortmund Football Club and TUI, the European tour operator, has won plaudits, but attracted controversy. He has been investigated in Germany twice for alleged market manipulation, although no charges have been laid.

Mr Homm formed his first investment firm aged just 18, before notching up spells working at big players in the securities markets such as Merrill Lynch and Fidelity.

Having built a reputation in Germany with Value Management & Research, an asset manager and private equity investor that he floated in Frankfurt in 2000, Mr Homm founded Absolute five years ago with his colleague Ullrich Angersbach. As the hedge fund sector boomed, Absolute grew rapidly. It started the year with 20 staff, floated on the London Stock Exchange’s junior AIM market in March and now has 80 employees with offices in Switzerland, Poland, Singapore and Buenos Aires among other locations.

As well as investors, Mr Homm’s departure shocked fellow executives, who had no idea that he planned to go. He remains Absolute’s largest shareholder, despite offloading a significant portion of his holding to his ex-wife and children as part of a divorce settlement. He said yesterday that he would continue his “fight” for shareholder value.

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