Built on a Lie: The Rise and Fall of Neil Woodford and the Fate of Middle England's Money: How One Man Made a Fortune, Lost His Investors' Billions and Changed an Industry for Ever

Owen Walker

ISBN 10: 0241468191 / ISBN 13: 9780241468197

Published by Penguin Business, 2021

About this Item

Hardcover, vii + 241 pages, NOT ex-library. Book looks unread, clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Unclipped dust jacket shows minor handling wear. -- Written by Owen Walker, an award-winning Financial Times journalist who first broke the story, the book chronicles the collapse of Neil Woodford's multi-billion-pound investment empire. It traces Woodford's trajectory from a "rockstar" fund manager at Invesco Perpetual to the 2019 implosion of his own firm, Woodford Investment Management. The narrative highlights how roughly £3.6 billion in savings from hundreds of thousands of retail investors were trapped in illiquid, high-risk assets. -- This investigative financial expose chronicles one of the most devastating investment scandals in modern British history, detailing the spectacular 2019 collapse of the country's most celebrated stock picker. The narrative traces the trajectory of a star fund manager who built a stellar reputation over two decades by reliably delivering steady returns through conservative blue-chip investments. However, upon establishing an independent firm, this strategy secretly and fatally shifted toward highly speculative, illiquid startup ventures in unlisted biotech and technology sectors. The text details the subsequent liquidity crisis, illustrating how a sudden wave of withdrawal requests forced the suspension of the flagship equity income fund. This unprecedented freeze trapped billions of pounds, effectively devastating the retirement portfolios of hundreds of thousands of everyday retail investors. Beyond individual hubris, the book functions as a scathing critique of the broader UK financial ecosystem. It exposes the systemic complicity of cheerleading wealth management platforms and regulatory oversight bodies that collectively ignored glaring warning signs to protect their own lucrative fee structures. This unvarnished exposure of structural vulnerabilities within asset management serves as a definitive cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked financial cults of personality.

Seller Inventory # 013140

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Built on a Lie: The Rise and Fall of Neil Woodford and the Fate of Middle England's Money: How One Man Made a Fortune, Lost His Investors' Billions and Changed an Industry for Ever
• Publisher: Penguin Business
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241468191
• ISBN 13: 9780241468197
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

The proud owner of a sprawling £ 14m estate in the Cotswolds, boasting a stable of eventing horses, a fleet of supercars and neighbouring the royal family, Neil Woodford was the most celebrated and successful British investor of his generation. He spent years beating the market; betting against the dot com bubble in the 1990s and the banks before the financial crash in 2008, making blockbuster returns for his investors and earning himself a reputation of 'the man who made Middle England rich'. As famous for his fleet of fast cars and ostentatious mansions, he was the rockstar fund manager that had the lifestyle to match. But, in 2019, after a stream of poorly-judged investments, Woodford's asset management company collapsed, trapping hundreds of thousands of rainy-day savers in his flagship fund and hanging £ 3.6bn in the balance. In Built on a Lie, Financial Times reporter Owen Walker reveals the disastrous failings of Woodford, the greed at the heart of his operation, the flaws of an industry in thrall to its star performers and the dangers of limited regulation. With exclusive access to Woodford's inner circle, Walker will reveal the full, jaw-dropping story of Europe's biggest investment scandal in a decade.

About the Author

Owen Walker is an award-winning business journalist, covering European banks for the Financial Times. He was previously asset management correspondent at the newspaper and his reporting on Neil Woodford's downfall led to the FT winning business and finance team of the year at the 2019 Society of Editors' Press Awards. His first book, Barbarians in the Boardroom, covered activist investors and was published in 2016.