Neil Woodford: no silver lining for his investors

Neil Woodford made every mistake it is possible to make as a money manager. And his investors have been stiffed. But however wrong it all went, Woodford never stopped taking the fees.

Neil Woodford © Michael Walter/Troika

Neil Woodford
(Image credit: Neil Woodford © Michael Walter/Troika)

The most miserable story of the week has to be that of Neil Woodford. Again. It comes with a few amusing bits, of course. The excellent investigation into the saga in last weekend's Financial Times notes that Woodford spent so much time bouncing around on his expensive eventing horses that "the company brought in phones with special recording functions so he could make trading instructions while out riding".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.