'An utter disgrace': Industry demands answers two years after Woodford fund collapse

Campaigners hit out at slow pace of investigation

Pedro Gonçalves
clock • 4 min read

Two years after the collapse of Neil Woodford's Equity Income fund, and with 300,000 investors still awaiting answers from the regulator despite being set to lose £1bn from its liquidation, industry commentators are calling for a solution to be found sooner rather than later in order to reinstate the public's faith in financial services.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched an enforcement probe in June 2019, but it recently admitted to the Treasury Select Committee this was unlikely to conclude until the end of this year, with no "precise timeline" for its outcome. Campaigner Gina Miller slammed the FCA's credibility as a fit-for-purpose regulator, calling for the watchdog to finish the statutory inquiry as soon as possible and then launch an independent investigation of its own regulatory "failures". "The snail's pace progress to date by the FCA is an utter disgrace and an insult to the 300,000 investors wh...

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