Portion of Neil Woodford's remaining investments, including Nanopore, sold off for $284 million - Endpoints News

rinwengi.blogspot.com

It’s been pre­cise­ly one year and one day since Neil Wood­ford froze his once-vaunt­ed fund, and while a glob­al pan­dem­ic has re­cent­ly shield­ed him from the tor­rent of head­lines, the fall­out con­tin­ues.

To­day, the Cal­i­for­nia-based patent li­cens­ing firm Aca­cia Re­search ac­quired the fund’s shares for 19 health­care and biotech com­pa­nies for $284 mil­lion.  Those com­pa­nies in­clude shares for pub­lic and pri­vate com­pa­nies and count some of Wood­ford’s most promi­nent bio-bets, such as Ther­a­vance Bio­phar­ma, Ox­ford Nanopore and Mereo Bio­phar­ma, ac­cord­ing to Sky News, which first re­port­ed the sale. It won’t in­clude shares for Ben­evel­on­tAI, the ma­chine learn­ing biotech once val­ued at $2 bil­lion.

The sale is part of the on­go­ing ef­fort to liq­ui­date Wood­ford’s fund, fol­low­ing its col­lapse last spring. By that point, the eq­ui­ty in­come fund, strained by sour­ing bets like North­west Bio­ther­a­peu­tics, had plum­met­ed from a peak val­u­a­tion of $10.2 bil­lion to $3.7 bil­lion. Dis­ap­point­ed and in some cas­es irate, in­vestors be­gan pulling their cash, but Wood­ford couldn’t sell his as­sets fast enough or for enough mon­ey to meet their de­mands. On June 4 he sus­pend­ed the ac­count.

In Oc­to­ber, with Wood­ford un­able to quell the tu­mult, Link As­set Ser­vices, the au­tho­rized cor­po­rate di­rec­tor of his firm, fired him and an­nounced a sell-off to be­gin in Jan­u­ary. That proved eas­i­er said than done, though. The val­ue of some of his com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Im­muno­core and Ben­evel­ont AI, had dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly since the fund’s sus­pen­sion. And, as many base­ball teams and front lawn rum­mage sale op­er­a­tors can tell you, fire­sales don’t pro­vide the best con­di­tion to ex­tract val­ue. A £550 mil­lion res­cue deal fell through in Feb­ru­ary. At one point, Wood­ford him­self emerged as a promi­nent bid­der to buy up his old port­fo­lio.

To­day’s sale may give in­vestors their first taste of cap­i­tal since March, even as it may dis­ap­point in size. “There will no doubt be huge frus­tra­tion at the val­u­a­tion achieved by Park Hill,” Ryan Hugh­es, head of ac­tive port­fo­lios at in­vest­ment plat­form AJ Bell, told Ya­hoo News, re­fer­ring to the bank that helped man­age the sale. “Park Hill and Link were in no po­si­tion to try and push the price high­er.  At the end of the day with such illiq­uid stocks, these as­sets are on­ly worth what some­one is pre­pared to pay for them.”

In a let­ter to in­vestors, Link As­set Ser­vices said that, in­clud­ing the Aca­cia deal,  the fund’s as­sets are worth £440 mil­lion. The Aca­cia sale could take up to 6 months to com­plete.

So­cial im­age: Neil Wood­ford, Wood­ford In­vest­ment Man­age­ment via Youtube

Let's block ads! (Why?)

"sold" - Google News
June 04, 2020 at 10:31PM
https://ift.tt/3eSOYr7

Portion of Neil Woodford's remaining investments, including Nanopore, sold off for $284 million - Endpoints News
"sold" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d9iyrC
https://ift.tt/3b37xGF

Bagikan Berita Ini