Woodford victims have been charged more than £11m in fees to date in order to receive compensation from a controversial scheme.
More than 300,000 investors lost out when the doomed Woodford Equity Investment Fund, run by fund manager Neil Woodford, collapsed in 2019 following severe liquidity issues.
The fund had been worth more than £10bn at its peak in 2017, before being suspended in June 2019 following severe liquidity issues.
After years of wrangling between the regulator and the authorised corporate director, Link Fund Solutions, a High Court judge approved a scheme of redress for up to £230m in February this year.
The scheme was put to investors in a vote prior to it reaching the High Court. And while 90pc of those who voted backed the scheme, only a fifth of total investors cast a ballot.
According to a report from auditors PwC, the scheme’s costs had hit £11.5m by July 31, which may well continue to rise. Under the terms of the deal, investors will see up to £230m of compensation paid to them, although this figure could come in as low as £185.7m, split between more than 250,000 investors.
Investors received their first payment from the scheme in March this year. It marked the fifth payout since the fund was ordered to wind up in October 2019. This brings the total amount received by investors to £2.73bn.
It remains unknown whether investors will see any of the remaining £44.7m held as cash by the scheme.
Investors will have to wait until March 2025 to see whether this policy has changed but the report stated “no additional … contribution is proposed at this stage”.
Alongside this compensation scheme, the remnants of the investments held by the fund continue to be sold, with these returns eventually set to find their way to investor pockets.
According to the fund’s annual report, the managers overseeing this process raised £3.5m from the sale of Atom Bank, along with roughly £1m from multiple sales of BenevolentAI shares.
The remainder of the fund is valued at £34.5m, although this figure only represents six of 19 holdings, as 13 have been re-valued as worthless.
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