Neil Woodford’s new fund oversubscribed by 10pc – despite the team already increasing the size by £300m
Neil Woodford's latest investment trust has been oversubscribed – having alread been nearly doubled from its initial figure.
The Woodford Patient Capital Trust invests in early stage and early growth companies, along with a mix of blue chip stocks.
Initially the team had decided the size of the closed-ended fund would be set at £500m, but this was extended to £800m in April when it became apparent that investors were clambering to get in.
Today it emerged the issue was still oversubscribed, by just under 10 per cent of the total funds.
Craig Newman, chief executive officer of Woodford Investment Management, said: “We have always wanted to minimise the chances of scaling back applications…. However, investor appetite was not the only factor we and the board had to consider: it was very much a balancing act between the amount of capital raised and the trust’s investment rationale and remit.
“A look at conventional investment trust launches over the past couple of decades or so shows that a capital raise of more than £500m has been an extremely rare event. So to raise more than £800m to invest in a previously overlooked asset class is a tremendous endorsement of the patient capital strategy.”
Newman said Woodford and the team already had “more than two-dozen” stock ideas “in the pipeline”.
This is only the second fund set up by star manager, who made his name as head of UK equities at Invesco Perpetual, since launching his own venture last year.
His first, the Woodford Equity Income fund, has total assets under management of £5.43bn.