Mark Gilbert , Columnist

Neil Woodford's Star Implodes in a Liquidity Crunch

Fund manager's big bets on unloved U.K. stocks weren't the problem; his love of unlisted securities was.

June 4, 2019 at 5:38 AM EDT

Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering asset management. A former London bureau chief for Bloomberg News, he is author of “Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable.”

Neil Woodford.
Source: Woodford Investment Management

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All political lives end in failure, Conservative politician Enoch Powell once remarked. Neil Woodford’s decision to freeze his flagship equity fund suggests stock pickers will struggle to escape a similar fate in the era of passive funds and computer-enhanced trading strategies.

Late on Monday, Woodford’s firm announced that it was stopping investors from withdrawing money from the LF Woodford Equity Income Fund. The pool had shrunk by 560 million pounds ($709 million) last month as the value of its holdings dropped and investors headed for the door. The decision leaves about 3.8 billion pounds trapped in a woefully underperforming portfolio.

Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal

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