It has been announced this lunchtime that one of the best known and most successful Fund Managers, Neil Woodford has announced his departure from INVESCO Perpetual by April next year. The media will almost certainly be awash with this over the next few days as Neil runs some of the largest and most successful funds in the UK. He has been an excellent servant of both INVESCO and investors, delivering some remarkable returns over a 25 year career.
That awkward succession thing…
The funds that he runs from Henley will be carefully handed over to Mark Barnett and Neil will oversee the process. This is likely to cause an exodus from the funds, not due to anything that Mark Barnett has done, or even INVESCO Perpetual, but investors that like active fund management, tend to follow the successful managers and that includes following them out the door. It will be interesting to see what happens to four key funds in particular.
- Invesco Perpetual Income Fund
- Invesco Perpetual High Income Fund
- Invesco Perpetual Distribution Fund
- Invesco Perpetual Monthly Income Plus Fund
Take stock and review
Whatever happens, I wish Neil a very happy… retirement (I’m not certain that he is, rumour has it that he will be starting his own fund group, who knows!) but he has certainly done a good job over many years. Naturally, anyone with holdings in any of the funds run by him will wish to give thought to how this may impact future decisions to hold the funds.
Dominic Thomas: Solomons IFA
