Woodford Investment Management has officially exited its offices in an Oxford business park as the wind-down of the equities boutique enters its final weeks.
Approximately a dozen staff remain at the business after authorised corporate director Link pulled the Woodford Equity Income in October, triggering Neil Woodford to resign from the Income Focus and Patient Capital Trust mandates and shut up shop.
A Companies House filing made public on Tuesday showed the business is now registered at a virtual office near Russell Square.
It had been based at Oxford Business Park with neighbours ranging from Audi and Grant Thornton to smaller biotech businesses and start-ups.
Woodford did not wish to comment on the office closure.
Fee revenue at Woodford Investment Management
The business had previously employed upwards of 60 people and had managed £15bn at its peak.
Woodford and chief executive Craig Newman are calculated to have raked in approximately £20m in dividends in the latest financial year to the end of March 2019.
That does not cover the period under which the Woodford Equity Income suspended, when the firm faced pressure to drop management fees from the likes of Treasury select committee chairwoman Nicky Morgan and Hargreaves Lansdown, which dropped its platform fee on the Wealth 50 constituent.
The business was originally known as Woodford Asset Management when it launched in May 2014 but became Woodford Investment Management when it restructured from an LLP to a limited company in April 2016.
Progress on Woodford fund wind-ups
Link told investors last week a decision on the future of Income Focus would be made before the end of the year with the ACD preferring a new fund manager to take on the mandate or for it to be merged with an existing fund rather than being wound up, like Equity Income.
Investors in Woodford’s flagship fund are forecast to lose 33% during the wind-up process, which is being conducted by Blackrock and PJT Partners.
The board of the Woodford Patient Capital Trust revealed in October it was handing the mandate to Schroders and is rebranding it the Schroder UK Public Private Trust.
