Neil Campling and Toby Clothier, the analysts known for identifying potential fraud at German payments firm Wirecard years before its collapse, have shut down their hedge fund, Chameleon Global Master Fund, due to its limited scale, according to a report by City AM.

Launched as part of Ronit Capital just a year and a half ago, the fund attracted approximately $2.7m (£2.1m), which Clothier acknowledged as insufficient to sustain operations.

Campling and Clothier became well-known in 2019 while at Mirabaud Securities, where they flagged suspicious activity around Wirecard and took a major short position on its stock prior to the company’s downfall amid fraud allegations. Seeking to apply the same scrutiny to other firms, they launched Chameleon Global Master Fund in May of the following year, focusing on identifying companies with signs of potential misrepresentation.

The fund’s managers shared scepticism toward companies in the AI sector, noting that the market hype resembled that of the dot-com bubble. While acknowledging AI’s potential, Clothier voiced doubt about the projected $40tn economic impact over the next decade, stating: “Is it going to add $40tn of economic value over the next ten years, which is what is priced in? No.”

Following the fund’s closure, Campling has joined Bloomberg as a European M&A correspondent, while Clothier is exploring the possibility of launching a new hedge fund.