Woodford ally loses job

ANOTHER leading figure at Neil Woodford’s empire has departed as the fund manager continues to grapple with a crisis.

Will Deer, who was head of institutional sales at Woodford Investment Management, has lost his job amid a wave of redundancies.

It comes after Woodford’s flagship Equity Income Fund was suspended after running out of ready cash to pay departing savers who wanted their money back.

Deer is the latest figure to leave, following long-serving analyst Saku Saha out of the door. He had worked with Woodford since the fund manager’s days at Invesco and remained with him when he struck out alone in 2014. Deer was responsible for managing relationships with clients such as St James’s Palace – which dumped Woodford as a fund manager after the Equity Income disaster.

He also handled relations with Kent County Council, which inadvertently prompted the ban on withdrawals from Equity Income when it tried to pull £263m out which could not be refunded.

Woodford’s funds employ about 45. But last week staff were told they faced redundancies in some cases. Cuts are expected to affect support staff, rather than those involved in managing investments.

A spokesman for Woodford said: ‘We have reluctantly entered into redundancy consultations with a number of staff.’