Ex-fund manager Neil Woodford’s investment information platform W4.0 has rejected the FCA’s criticism of its service as offering regulated advice and says it will continue to develop the platform despite facing an injunction from the FCA.
Earlier this week the FCA launched civil proceedings ex-fund manager Neil Woodford and W4.0, Mr Woodford's financial information website, for allegedly operating without authorisation.
W4.0 is a subscription-based platform which provides regular market commentary and analysis of global sectors and economics, mainly from Mr Woodford.
In a statement, W4.0 and Mr Woodford said they rejected the ‘characterisation’ of W4.0 as offering regulated advice.
W4.0 said: “W4.0 notes the Financial Conduct Authority's decision to commence a civil claim against W4.0 and Neil Woodford. We are 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.
“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.”
W4.0 added: “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.”
W4.0 says it has been in ‘dialogue’ with the FCA to understand which of its features it considers to be outside the regulatory perimeter and says it regrets that litigation has been launched.
The FCA says that, in its view, the activity by W4.0 breaches sections 19 and 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) and it is seeking an injunction against Mr Woodford and W4.0 to stop them carrying on potentially unlawful activities.
In August last year, the FCA provisionally fined Neil Woodford and his associated firm Woodford Investment Management (WIM) for failures in their management of the Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF).
The FCA decided to provisionally fine Mr Woodford £5,888,800 and ban him from holding senior manager roles and managing funds for retail investors. The FCA also decided to fine WIM £40m. Mr Woodford and Woodford Investment Management referred the Decision Notices to the Upper Tribunal.
The FCA said at the time that any findings in the Decision Notices were therefore provisional and reflected the FCA’s belief as to what occurred and how it considers their behaviour should be characterised, the regulator said.
WEIF was an investment fund managed by Mr Woodford and WIM. The fund was suspended in June 2019, leaving investors – a significant majority of whom were ordinary retail customers – unable to access their money. The value of the WEIF had fallen from a high of over £10.1bn in May 2017 to £3.6bn in the run-up to its suspension.
In April 2024 the FCA published a warning notice against Neil Woodford. It said he had a "defective and unreasonably narrow" understanding of his responsibilities for managing liquidity risks. Soon after Mr Woodford launched his new website Woodford Views, he wrote: “I am neither hero nor villain.”