Author: Jonathan Symcox

Neil Woodford, a former star of the City whose equity fund collapsed in 2019, is being sued by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Woodford is accused of operating without authorisation a year after the regulator said it would ban him from the City and issued a £46 million fine to him and his company. He is contesting that decision.

The Woodford Equity Income fund was once worth more than £10 billion but a string of poor investments – including tech-first estate agent Purplebricks – led to its suspension and eventual collapse. The FCA said it had high exposure to illiquid and unquoted shares.

After Woodford resigned and closed down his company, administrators wound down the fund. Many of its 30,000 investors were left hugely out of pocket.

Now the FCA has started civil proceedings against Woodford and W4.0, a subscription-based platform registered in the United Arab Emirates.

In 2024 Woodford started the W4.0 Podcast on his Woodford Views YouTube channel in which he “shares his perspective on markets, sectors and the forces shaping the investment landscape. Each episode cuts through media noise and headline hysteria to focus on the facts that really matter”.

Each episode of the podcast has several thousand views on YouTube.

W4.0 told BusinessCloud that it was “surprised the FCA chose to announce this publicly before any proceedings have been served on us, and before the dialogue we have been engaged in for the past nine months was concluded”.

It added: “Throughout our dialogue with the FCA, we have worked to understand precisely which features of the service it considers fall within the regulatory perimeter. At each stage, we made changes and adjustments in response to accommodate the FCA. We have continued to engage with it to seek a resolution. We would have continued the dialogue, and it is regrettable that the FCA has chosen to litigate instead.

“We were clear about W4.0’s purpose from the start: to inform and educate subscribers and to provide the research, analysis, and commentary they need to make their own decisions. We deliberately informed readers that we were not regulated and did not provide financial advice. Like other publishers and platforms offering this kind of information, it was built to sit outside the regulatory perimeter, and we remain confident that it does. Consequently, we do not accept the FCA’s characterisation of the service.

“Informed by subscriber feedback, we will continue to build the features, education, information, analysis and insight that W4.0 was created to provide, and we will have more to share with subscribers in due course.”