Woodford and partner shared £13.8m in dividends in final year
Once-feted fund manager in the process of winding up his company with a skeleton staff
Neil Woodford and his business partner shared £13.8m in dividends in his company’s final full financial year, even as investors deserted its funds due to chronic underperformance.
Mr Woodford, who is in the process of winding up his company with a skeleton staff, received two-thirds of the final dividend payment, which brings the total personally reaped by Mr Woodford and Craig Newman to £112m since 2014.
At least 300,000 investors are still trapped in Mr Woodford’s flagship Equity Income fund, which was suspended in June.
The pair recently travelled to China in an attempt to court interest for a new business, having seen UK investors desert the once-feted fund manager in droves.
Mr Woodford’s company once managed £15bn, but suffered heavy investor withdrawals in its final two years and was forced to suspend the Equity Income fund last summer, causing Europe’s biggest investment scandal for a decade.
The company’s annual report for the financial year ending in March 2019 was published on Companies House on Tuesday morning.
Between March 2018 and March 2019, the company made £18.3m in operating profit, compared to £41.7m a year earlier. The company blamed “underperformance in the Woodford Equity Income Fund combined with a period of sustained and negative press coverage” for the suspension of the fund in June.
The FT earlier calculated a higher final dividend payment, which was based on higher fee income and did not account for a £2m purchase of intangible fixed assets.