Woodford’s cash call raises £800m as fund debuts on LSE

FUND manager Neil Woodford has raised a record £800m for his new investment fund – demonstrating his enduring box office appeal among investors.

Woodford’s investment trust makes its debut on the London Stock Exchange today, having raised the maximum amount ahead of its launch.

High demand meant that shares in the investment trust were oversubscribed by 10pc, meaning investors will not get all the shares they applied for.

The launch dwarfs the previous record amount raised which was £594m by Mercury European Privatisation in 1994.

Fidelity’s Anthony Bolton, perhaps the only fund manager who could reasonably claim to have as successful long-term track record as Woodford, managed to raise only £460m for his China Special Situations investment trust in 2010. He has since retired. Woodford’s fund will invest heavily in fledgling firms and scientific intellectual property emerging from Britain’s universities.

Ben Yearsley from broker Charles Stanley said: ‘This has been a phenomenal success story. The onus is now on him to deliver. Clearly a lot of people have invested in the fund on the back of Neil and his long-term record. But this is a different prospect because in the past he has predominantly invested in big listed companies.

‘This is a very long-term investment. I wonder if people will have enough patience.’

Woodford, pictured, made his name during a 25-year stint at Invesco Perpetual where at one stage he was running more than £33bn of investors’ money – predominantly in the flagship Income and High Income funds.

He left the firm a year ago to launch his first fund, Woodford Equity Income.

The new venture now runs £5.4bn and holds many of the big blue-chip stocks Woodford plumped for at Invesco, including pharma giant AstraZeneca and telecoms goliath BT.

Woodford Equity Income has returned 19pc since launch last June, compared with 7.5pc for the average fund in its sector.