The firm that was launched with much fanfare last year as a new home for star manager Neil Woodford has gathered assets very quickly in the intervening months, with its flagship fund now boasting more than £7bn in assets under management.
According to the asset management company’s audited accounts, the recently created asset management company made £27.5m in revenues and incurred £616,789 in cost of sales and £14.8m in operating expenses.
Of those expenses, £8.4m was listed as personnel expenses, which included £6.8m in wages and salaries. The bulk of the rest of the costs (£6.3m), were listed under general and administrative expenses. According to the accounts the average number of employees during the period was 20, 11 in administration, seven in distribution and two in investment management.
The firm accounts for members’ remuneration as an expense. This remuneration came in at £733,333, which when taken out of operating profit, left £11.3m in the business as profit for the period available for discretionary division among members.
While it said that it had allocated £278,934 had been allocated during the period, for the period under review th member with the highest allocation (including remuneration) was awarded £645,601. But, during the 15 months, it said £4.5m was withdrawn by members.
These withdrawals left a balance of £8.9m in equity in the business as at end March. This figure was based on £12m in members’ interests after profit for the period and £1.2m in equity introduced by members.
During the period, two of the four directors, Nicholas Hamilton and Richard Catherwood Smith resigned, leaving Neil Woodford and CEO, Craig Newman as the two remaining members.
The firm also made charitable donations of £10,385, which included £5,000 to help fight the Ebola outbreak and £2995 in aid of critically ill children.
