Woodford Fund Closures

Published / Last Updated on 17/10/2019

Neil Woodford has announced he will close his last 2 remaing investment funds after being ousted from his flagship equity income fund last Tuesday as administrators took over the fund.

The funds are to be wound up and investors cash returned.

Woodford, at the peak of his business popularity, managed more than £1.4 billion and was nicknamed the “Oracle of Oxford”  and said he would be also resiging from managing the last 2 funds: Income Focus and Patient Capital as the administrators move in.

At the start of his career, Woodford worked at the city firm Invesco for 26 years.  He invested £1,000 in his first funds there and by the time he left the company the fund would of returned £25,000.  A 25 fold increase on the Invesco fund.

For Woodford's own investment management firm, after a few big investments in the stock market that didn’t perform well, investors started to withdraw their money.  This created liquidity issues and ultimately a run on the fund.

Neil also had stakes in unlisted technology and healthcare which he thought had strong potential of growth and found it difficult to raise money quickly selling shares in these private companies woyj redemption requests then taking over.

Comment

We have never 'chased' fund managers.  We have seen so many of these runs on other 'Star' managers and simply do not follow them.  We are happy to say that we have never recommended a fund to a client that has ever ended with administrators being called in. (TOUCH WOOD!).

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