We had the news that disgraced disabled-parking-space abuser Neil Woodford was setting up in Jersey earlier this year but that seems to have come to nothing (I can’t think why…..) Now, according to the Sunday Times, he plans to set up in the Caymen Islands and Delaware.
The sale of a bunch of biotech assets by Link from the Neil Woodford portfolio which used to be known at his Equity Income fund has received criticism as the buyer immediately offloaded some of it at a massive profit. Surely that means those assets were sold too cheaply……or does it?
Of course, the bad news is that the worst of them haven’t been sold and the buyer, Acacia Research, got a thumping discount. The news of the discount should come as no surprise to ShareProphets readers, as Tom Winnifrith, Cynical Bear and I have all warned of as much. And with the absolute dogs left over, there is surely more pain to come for Neil Woodford's motley crew of hard-up former investors into hs Equity Income Fund.
Schroder UK Public Private Trust (SUPP) - formerly disgraced Neil Woodford’s Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) - has released its FY19 numbers and the report is truly a dog’s breakfast. It is a shambles: the manager has gone but the board should be sacked at once.
Friday lunchtime is hardly a time to issue news for people to notice and doing it on election results day suggests that there is bad news being buried. And so Woodford Patient Capital (WPCT) announced it was changing its name to Schroder UK Public Private Trust (SUPP) as of Monday to reflect the appointment of Schroders at manager, replacing the disgraced Neil Woodford who is off to count his piles of cash from running the Woodford funds into the ground. The company also announced an extended banking facility – and it is here that the bad news lies.
After a massive writedown in the carrying value of Industrial Heat was imposed on Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) today, the company is almost certainly more than 20% geared and thus technically in default on its bank loans. It has hyet to 'fess up but you can do the math...
Shareholders in Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) were this morning invited to celebrate as Susan Searle announced the appointment of Schroders to replace the disgraced Neil Woodford as manager. There will thus be no need for Neil to work out his notice period following his "trresignation" last week.
Woodford Patient Capital (WPCT) - Neil Woodford's last investment fund still standing, although not for long as he is working his notice - has announced its latest NAV per share. If I were Susan Searle, Chair of the Board, I would be a tad concerned.....
Neil Woodford has been fired from his flagship Equity Income Fund today, vindicating our more than 1000 articles and podcasts exposing him since 2015, but his problems do not end there. I recently commissioned a resting fund manager to produce a detailed bottom up analysis of Neil Woodford’s Patient Capital Trust (WPCT). That report from a man known as “The Badger” landed with me last night and is shocking in its conclusion: the Trust is essentially worthless. The Badger writes:
Annual Accounts of Limited Companies have to be lodged at Companies House wthin nine months of the reporting period end. Of course, the likes of BP and Shell manage to produce theirs within around four months and if massive organisations like those can do it in four months one might wonder why Neil Woodford’s cash-guzzling dog Industrial Heat – IH Holdings International Limited, to give it its proper title – can’t do it in nine months. You see, its FY18 accounts should have been in on 30 September, but Companies House has them marked as overdue.
I am indebted to Pierotlunaire for his post over the weekend on my piece Woodford Dog BenevolentAI: as predicted......but it is good news really! for the paperwork for Temasek’s investment into this cash-hungry dog has arrived at Companies House and as expected Temasek has take its pound of flesh.
The “good news” for Neil Woodford was that BenevolentAI had managed to attract an investment of $90 million from Temasek. The valuation of BenevolentAI was hit for six, dropping to around $1 billion (from $2 billion) but the other piece of good(ish) news for Neil was that this would drop his unquoted investments held in his Equity Income Fund, which was at the time well over its limit of 10% of the fund – partially because the dodgy Guernsey listings had been scrapped. But of course it also meant that book value of his investments in BenevolentAI had halved at the stroke of a pen.
Last week one of the highlights for me was the shadow of incompetence spreading at Neil's Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) as it tried to reassure the market with the appointment of Raymond Abbott to its board. What Susan Searle, the Chair of WPCT, would have hoped is that the appointment of Mr Abbott would be seen as a safe pair of hands. Naturally she will have done her homework, which is why the original RNS of Monday had to be corrected, after my prompt, as it mis-named one of Mr Abbot’s previous appointments and missed another off altogether. But is Mr Abbott a safe pair of hands or butterfingers?
The Daily Telegraph's lamentable Questor column has today, finally, as you can see below, advised folks to sell Neil Woodford's Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) at a loss of 60%. Talk about horses and stable doors! It gets worse.
Well that only took four days – well done Woodford Patient Capital (WPCT) and its Chair, Susan Searle. On Monday it announced the appointment of Mr Raymond Abbott as a new director – but got one of his former companies wrong, missed out another and has still neglected to mention that Foresight 4 VCT suffered a £30 million accounting error on his watch as chairman of the audit committee,,an error under FCA investigation, and a further £3 million accounting error after he was rewarded for his outstanding service and promoted to Chairman of the company.
On Monday Susan Searle, the Chair of Neil Woodford's Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) announced the appointment of Raymond Abbott to the board. This was part of a strategy of renewal as she tries desperately to restore market confidence in WPCT, whose shares are trading at around a discount of one third to its stated NAV, a NAV which has collapsed this year. I have already pointed to the £30 million accounting error at Foresight 4 VCT under Mr Abbott’s watch at chairman of its audit committee, the shambles at Climate Change Control (which WPCT reported as plc when it was a limited company, and we are still yet to see a correction) and a further accounting error of around £3 million at Foresight 4 after he was promoted for doing such a fine job as chairman of its audit committee to chairman of the board. You could not make it up. But it seems that WPCT has not only listed the wrong name of one if his companies, it has missed another off altogether!
Having mentioned two major blunders already, it seems that new appointment Raymond Abbott to the board of WPCT (whose previous directorships are yet to be corrected by WPCT) has another major blunder on his hands – and it is back at Foresight 4 VCT where, having presided over a £30 million blunder as chairman of the audit committee (and he a trained accountant) he was promoted to Chairman. Let us now turn to the FY18 accounts of Foresight 4……
Susan Searle, Chair of Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT), really does have some explaining to do as WPCT released its half-year numbers to the market this morning – reporting deadline day. Quite apart from the shocking performance of the fund under her watch, and the total mess it is in, we have been treated to an admission that the quoted NAVs released by the company have, quite simply, been wrong - a work of fiction.
