Hargreaves funds recoup a further £65m from Woodford payments in 2020

Hargreaves Lansdown’s multi-manager funds have recouped a further £65m-worth of assets trapped in the Woodford Equity Income fund in 2020. 

Investors in the six multi-manager funds that held Neil Woodford’s former fund received around £312m in the first round of payouts distributed by authorised corporate director Link Fund Solutions last January.

Since then, they have received around £22m in the second distribution in March, £27m in the third payout in August and close to £15m in the fourth round at the end of December, according to figures disclosed in the multi-manager annual accounts.

Link has returned £2.5bn to investors since the wind-up of the fund, renamed LF Equity Income, commenced. After the fourth distribution in December the remaining assets in the fund were valued at £192.6m. 

HL Income & Growth still has £28m trapped in ex-Woodford fund

At the end of the previous reporting period, for 2019, Hargreaves multi-manager funds had a combined stake valued at £450m trapped in the frozen Woodford fund. 

But a year later the value of that stake has dwindled to £42m as Link has disposed of assets in the portfolio, with the help of Blackrock and PJT Partners, and the fund sustained heavy losses.

The HL Multi-Manager Income & Growth trust, the largest fund in the range with more than £1.9bn, had over 11% of total assets invested in the fund in September 2019, representing £300.4m. At the end of the latest annual report, it still had 1.5% held in Woodford’s fund, representing £28m. 

The HL Multi-Manager Special Situations and Balanced Managed funds also had exposure remaining, with stakes valued at £6.9m and £4.2m respectively.

HL Multi-Manager Equity & Bond managers Lee Gardhouse and David Smith, who ditched £4.9m of  shares in Woodford Equity Income the month before it suspended in June 2019, had around 0.7% or £1.7m still invested in the fund last September.

HL Multi-Manager stakes in Woodford Equity Income over one year 

Source: Hargreaves Lansdown 

All six multi-manager funds were loss-making last year, with the UK-focused funds suffering the steepest falls amid the Covid crisis. 

The HL Multi-Manager Income & Growth fund sustained the heaviest losses, dropping 18.9% in the year to September while the IA UK Equity Income sector fell 17.3%. 

The HL Multi-Manager UK Growth fund also racked up double-digit losses, falling 12.9% over the period, though it outperformed the IA UK All Companies sector, which was down 13.2%. 

Meanwhile the £1.6bn HL Multi-Manager Special Situations fund, which sits in the IA Global sector but holds around one-fifth in UK funds and stocks, lost 1.2% as peers generated returns of 7.0%. 

In a separate update, Hargreaves announced it would be introducing a tiered charging structure across its multi-manager range for funds above £1bn in size.

See also: Hargreaves multi-manager funds stung by lingering Woodford exposure in second value assessment