Woodford

talexuser

https://www.trustnet.com/news/13455011/woodford-slapped-with-huge-fines-and-management-ban-by-the-fca

It always amazes me how long it takes anything to be done in this country for things that are so obviously self evident.

london21

It did drag on for so long tbh. Feel sorry for the victims affected. 

friolento

TBH, I'd be surprised if Woodford ever pays a penny of any fine levied on him, or be fazed by the restrictions placed on him. He must long have implemented his UK exit plan, anyway. 

jimjames

talexuser said:

It always amazes me how long it takes anything to be done in this country for things that are so obviously self evident.

Totally agree. LCF happened before this and 7 years on those involved are still walking free with £100 million of investors cash. Unlike Woodford that was a complete ponzi so should be easier to prosecute.

EthicsGradient

friolento said:

TBH, I'd be surprised if Woodford ever pays a penny of any fine levied on him, or be fazed by the restrictions placed on him. He must long have implemented his UK exit plan, anyway. 

Previous news on him was the launch of a "platform" a couple of months ago, for which you'd pay £70/mth for his suggestions in constructing a portfolio.

The new venture is called W4.0, and the elaborately designed subscriber-only website was created by the same individual who was head of technology at Woodford Investment Management, the now defunct company that was Woodford’s initial venture into entrepreneurship following his departure from Invesco. 

...

Rather than a fund, the new venture is a subscription service offering a range of four potential portfolios, along with Woodford’s thoughts on those stocks and markets as a whole. The key difference is that it is at the readers discretion as to whether they mirror Woodford’s portfolio or not.

...

Woodford’s view is that as the new venture is not providing financial services, it is not a regulated activity. 

...

Woodford is adamant that he sees a role for financial advisers and wealth managers among his possible client list. 

...

Jon Doyle, an adviser at Juniper Wealth, says: “Neil Woodford’s return doesn’t signal reinvention — it signals a refusal to reflect.

“It takes a rare kind of arrogance to repackage the same conviction-led approach, bypass regulatory oversight, and offer it back to the public with little sign that the lessons of the past have been learnt.

“In my view, overconfidence is the most dangerous bias in investing — because it feels like certainty. Investors deserve humility, transparency, and structure. This feels more like ego dressed as access.” 

What is behind Neil Woodford’s latest venture? - FTAdviser

Aylesbury_Duck

I consider myself fortunate to have avoided his fund.  I was a naive investor many years ago, drip-feeding £250 a month into a Halifax S&S ISA for several years and then reading a Which? report which showed how I could pay much lower fees with other providers, so I jumped to the Invesco Perpetual fund which was run by Woodford at the time.  I had other life priorities at the time so didn't realise what a "star" he'd become, and some time later I remember getting a letter from Invesco to basically plead with me to sit tight rather than jump to Woodford's own fund.  Inertia on my part (rather than any particular wisdom or foresight) meant that I stayed put, whereas I understand why many other investors who were much more informed and involved than I was, jumped across.  Unfortunate for them and I do count myself lucky.  Sometimes, less knowledge can be a fortunate thing.

talexuser

I was in his Invesco fund for years, and it made a lot of money for me as a top performer for many years and through important crashes like the dotcom. I jumped to his fund soon after launch and made around 30% gain before analysts started to question his decisions and sell notices began to appear. I sold out then, about a year before it collapsed with a gain of around 40% just before the crash. There was plenty of notice that something was going wrong, with sell notices from quite a few platforms, but for people who did not read financial bulletins and who only read popular papers hyping the "star manager" constantly it turned out to be a disaster. Also Hargreaves Lansdown which has a lot of guilt here. It showed the so called oversight funds are supposed to have here is a complete sham.