Neil Woodford, Woodford Investment Management.
Woodford Investment Management
LONDON – Neil Woodford, the former UK stockbroker whose investment firm collapsed in 2019, has said “sorry” to investors for the losses as it shared plans to return to a new business.
Woodford said in an interview with The Telegraph, published Saturday, that he “felt very sorry for what I did wrong.”
The fund manager also announced that it would launch a new investment firm, Woodford Capital Management Partners, in Jersey. According to reports, the firm will only raise money from professional investors and will focus on the biotechnology sector, British biosciences and healthcare.
Supporting the riskiest companies in the early stages and not listed in these areas, coupled with the poor performance of other stock selections, was what led to a wave of redemptions from Woodford Equity Income Fund investors. This resulted in the suspension and eventual liquidation of the fund, which forced the UK’s most famous fund manager to close its first company, Woodford Investment Management, in October 2019. The suspension and closure of the fund went assume that ordinary investors would have to wait months to get their money back.
Woodford became famous in the dotcom bubble by avoiding costly technology stocks and selling banks before the financial crisis while working at Invesco.
Woodford said in the Telegraph interview that for the rest of his life he didn’t want to “hide and be beaten by the things that happened the best part of two years ago.”
The UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, is still investigating the facts that led to the suspension of the Woodford fund.
In the interview, Woodford defended the culture of his former company, saying the exploration in the media “hurts.”
He also signed up for the fund’s administration, Link Fund Solutions, to close Wood Equity’s revenue.
“I didn’t make the decision to suspend the fund, I didn’t make the decision to liquidate the fund,” Woodford said.
“As history will show, these decisions were very detrimental to investors and were not mine,” he added, saying they were “Link decisions”.
A Link Fund Solutions spokesman was not immediately available to comment on Woodford’s statements when contacted by CNBC.
Link has denied Woodford’s claim, according to an article published in Investment Week, which states that any suggestion that the company “was not aware of the possibility of suspension or did not participate in discussions about the decision to suspend is incorrect.” .