Peter Hargreaves has hit back at critics linking the £64m dividend he drew from Hargreaves Lansdown with the Woodford Equity Income fund suspension.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, conducted from his private jet, Hargreaves (pictured, right, with Blue Whale manager Stephen Yiu) said the fund suspension and its inclusion on the Wealth 50 buy list was nothing to do with him.
The billionaire owns a 32% in the FTSE 100 investment platform. He stood down from the board in 2015.
He said: “The clients have been stuffed in this horrible Woodford fund. I’ve drawn this big dividend. Nothing to do with me and I’ve been very successful.”
“What do they want me to do? Give the dividend back to the unit holders?”
Mark Dampier, who championed Neil Woodford via the Wealth 50, was also criticised for raking in millions from Hargreaves Lansdown stock weeks before Woodford Equity Income suspended.
Hargreaves said it “annoyed the hell” out of him that Woodford had not been truthful to Hargreaves Lansdown, a reference to accusations that the equities manager kept the platform in the dark about his breaches of the 10% limit for unquoted companies in Ucits funds.
But, Hargreaves added he was also annoyed that platform “let it go on for so long”. In January, Hargreaves head of research Dampier described the criticism he had faced for consistently backing Woodford in the face of poor performance as a “hassle”.
