The Church of England is looking to recruit an investment director to look after a £5.7bn (6.4bn) investment portfolio, just months after one of its archbishops lambasted short-sellers of banking stocks, labeling them "bank robbers and asset strippers".

The successful candidate will report to the 33 Church commissioners, who include the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, who are in charge of the Church of England's investments, which was most recently valued at £5.7bn at the end of 2007. The commissioners are based in London.

A high-profile advertisement placed in the Financial Times today did not include a requirement for belief in God.

A spokesman said: "There is no genuine occupational requirement to stipulate that the successful candidate must be a practicing Christian. However, it is expected that the post-holder will have a sympathy for the goals of the organization, which is to provide sustainable financial support for the Church's mission."

However, the Church will be more restrictive on the fund manager's methods of investments. The commissioners have a blanket ban on shorting equities and have no exposure to hedge funds that short stocks, according to a spokesman.

Nor do they lend their UK and US securities for such purposes, he added. A currency hedging program set up in 2007 is designed to protect the sterling value of foreign assets, and its £7m holding in fund of hedge funds manager Man Group is via an index tracking fund, he said.

John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, said last year: "To a bystander like me, those who made £190m deliberately underselling the shares of HBOs, in spite of its very strong capital base, and drove it into the bosom of Lloyds TSB bank, are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers."

When asked whether the Church would consider employing fund managers who had shorted HBOS, the spokesman said: "Part of the appointments process is assessing a person's ability to work within the ethos laid down by the Church."

The new post is being created as a result of the increasing uncertainty of the financial markets, according to the spokesman. The new recruit will take charge of asset allocation and will have ultimate responsibility for the performance of the portfolio.

The Churchs investments fund pensions for clergy, as well as provide money for the ministry of bishops, cathedrals and parishes, according to todays advertisement. It said that investment performance has been very strong but performance for 2008 is as yet unavailable. The commissioners said that their latest actuarial advice suggests that the portfolio will meet requirements into 2013, even if markets continue to fall.

At the end of 2007, the portfolio was worth £5.7bn. A more recent figure is unavailable as the Church's property valuations are conducted at the end of the year.

The flagship fund of Crispin Odey, one of the highest-profile short sellers of banks last year, reported a double-digit positive return for 2008, as the ban on shorting UK financials stocks came to an end today.

Odey's 1.3bn ($1.7bn) flaship fund, Odey European Inc, returned 11% over the year. This compared with an MSCI Europe index return of -44%, according to the fund's latest figures released yesterday. The Credit Suisse/Tremont hedge fund index was down 19% for the period.

Investors in the $367m (276m) OEI Mac fund, which feeds assets directly into the flagship fund but incorporates a macro overlay managed by Odey himself, had an even more successful year thanks to currency positions that bet on a fall in sterling. It returned 43% over the 12 month period, outperforming the index by 87%.

It was even better for investors in the feeder fund's unhedged sterling share class, which was launched a year ago for investors with a bearish view on sterling, according to David Stewart, chief executive of Odey Asset Management. Thanks to the positive performance of the flagship strategy, the active currency positions of the macro overlay on the fund, and the lack of hedging against a fall in sterling, they enjoyed a 73% positive return over the year.

In a letter to investors issued yesterday, Odey said: "2008 was a difficult year. As our shareholders remarked, it was not the year of the rat for nothing. If something could go wrong it did go wrong...Hedge funds saw on average redemptions of 40%. Whatever they might still say all clients started to view cash as their benchmark."

The fund came under close scrutiny last year for its long-term short positions in the banking sector. The Financial Services Authority in the UK banned fresh short-selling in specified financial stocks, or adding to existing shorts, in September. The ban ended today, but investors still have to disclose short positions greater than 0.25% on affected companies.

In a note issued to investors in October, Odey said: "We are definitely being labelled the bad boys, but as everyone knows, this financial crisis has come from a direction that no one predicted, apart from the bad boys. Credit lending built on air has crashed and is crashing to earth."

However, David Stewart said that only a fifth of the fund's positive performance as a result of short positions was from banks: "It was a complicated year. By and large the longs did badly and the shorts did very well."

Odey also hit the headlines for holding a short position in Volkswagen, a German car company, when its shares soared 82% in a day after Porsche said that it had increased its direct and indirect holdings in the company to 74%, just below the three-quarters level it would need to take total control of its rival.

However, Stewart said that the loss from the holding was relatively small, as the share price quickly returned to normal levels and the fund did not change its position as a result of the surge in price. He said that the holding cost the fund about 1.5 extra percentage points of performance.

It is a second year of strong returns from Odey, who posted a net return of 55% for 2007, beating almost all his rivals. It lost 1.5% the previous year.

His 120m long-only European fund was less successful, but still managed to substantially outperform its index. It returned -22% over the year, compared with -44% from the MSCI Total Return Net Europe index.