Woodford Group Action

bostonerimus

I always thought Woodford was an outlier and so would never have given him any of my money. He's guilty of hubris and stupidity. The "criminal" behaviour was by the media who hyped him relentlessly and H&L who recommended his fund

Thrugelmir

bostonerimus said:

I always thought Woodford was an outlier and so would never have given him any of my money. He's guilty of hubris and stupidity. The "criminal" behaviour was by the media who hyped him relentlessly and H&L who recommended his fund

And Link? 

Wotulookinat

dunstonh said:

Why do you think losses should be recovered? 

....... it would be interesting to know why you think you should be compensated for losses resulting in choices you made.

Well, that's easy enough to answer - a duty to exercise due skill, care and diligence is owed by investment managers to their clients, as it is with any other business, which requires them to meet a certain standard of care when selecting and acquiring or disposing of investments for the client’s portfolio.

Nothing to do with whether the investments go up or down, but given the spectacular crash of the fund, the fact that he was ducking and diving with Guernsey listings to keep within the regulatory framework and the fact that he creamed off £13.8 million pounds of investors money in dividends, even though the fund was in a death spiral, certainly raises questions as to whether or not the fund was managed carefully, or carelessly.

It may well be that his actions were exemplary and it was simply that the markets just didn't swing the way he hoped (yeah, right !), but the op has a right to ask the question - was he acting with due diligence, or was he playing fast and loose with the op's hard earned wonga ?  

Prism

Everyone invested in the fund in the later days knew exactly what they were invested in right? The entire portfolio was available for all to see and updated monthly with commentary. I have never seen such a transparent fund. So since everyone knew that they were invested in a selection of UK high yielding businesses with a large chunk of more illiquid private holdings they shouldn't have any complaint - unless of course they didn't actually pay attention to any of that. 

Thrugelmir

Wotulookinat said:

dunstonh said:

Why do you think losses should be recovered? 

....... it would be interesting to know why you think you should be compensated for losses resulting in choices you made.

Well, that's easy enough to answer - a duty to exercise due skill, care and diligence is owed by investment managers to their clients, as it is with any other business, which requires them to meet a certain standard of care when selecting and acquiring or disposing of investments for the client’s portfolio.

Nothing to do with whether the investments go up or down, but given the spectacular crash of the fund, the fact that he was ducking and diving with Guernsey listings to keep within the regulatory framework and the fact that he creamed off £13.8 million pounds of investors money in dividends, even though the fund was in a death spiral, certainly raises questions as to whether or not the fund was managed carefully, or carelessly.

It may well be that his actions were exemplary and it was simply that the markets just didn't swing the way he hoped (yeah, right !), but the op has a right to ask the question - was he acting with due diligence, or was he playing fast and loose with the op's hard earned wonga !  

Hasn't stopped Woodford advising Acacia Research who have bought many of the illiquid holdings in a cut-price deal, and are already booking considerable gains. 

[Deleted User]

Hargreaves Lansdown were complicit in the Woodford fiasco imo. 

talexuser

Difficult to see how Woodford can be sued for anything. He quadrupled my money in the years of Perpetual High Income, top man. I was up 40% in Equity Income. It went down to 30% gain, many intermediaries said it was time to sell, and looking at some of his holdings I did not understand I did. 30% in 3 years of a UK fund at that time is not a bad return at all. The question for investors is purely Hargreaves Lansdown, recommending up till the last minute of failure, looks very bad advice compared to other brokers who got it right a long time beforehand. When you add in their financial interest in pumping the fund, you may have a tiny case if they haven't shredded all the internal meeting minutes by now, which they have had plenty of time to do. A microscopic chance of success, and only if you were an HL customer with individual advice. And the whole thing has not harmed their business at all - too big to fail again.

[Deleted User]

talexuser said:

 And the whole thing has not harmed their business at all - too big to fail again.

Not sure about that, talexuser. Hargreaves Lansdown company value down £2 billion since its high shortly before Woodford was gated - much worse than their contemporaries.

talexuser

£2 billion compared to what? 188,000 new clients, a record,  £7.7 billion of new business, also a record, revenue great upward trend, operating profit great upward trend, and the founder making millions from selling his shares? share prices go up and down, in the short term don't tell the whole story. 

bostonerimus

Thrugelmir said:

bostonerimus said:

I always thought Woodford was an outlier and so would never have given him any of my money. He's guilty of hubris and stupidity. The "criminal" behaviour was by the media who hyped him relentlessly and H&L who recommended his fund

And Link? 

I read that three quarters of Woodford Equity investors bought it through H&L because of his previous success and also because it was on H&L's "Wealth 50" list. This is an example of hubris and complacency and probably of a few too many steak dinners and drinks between "chaps".  Woodford is a great example of what can go wrong in narrow active funds.