Neil Woodford has decided to leave the company in April next year. He manages the large and hugely successful Perpetual Income and High Income Funds.

Neil has been a highly successful fund manager, an industry legend, and has been at Invesco Perpetual for most of his working life.

His ability to earn his investors consistently better than average returns on their investments with him has meant that we have heartily recommended him over several decades. His funds appear in the majority of our clients’ portfolios.

Neil is head of UK Equities at the company and he works alongside other fund managers, sharing their ideas and giving them the benefit of his experience. Invesco Perpetual themselves are a well resourced organisation and provide their managers with all the resources and research need to manage their portfolios.

Our view is that whilst we would have preferred Neil to remain with the company, we are comfortable with the calibre of the manager replacing him.

The replacement manager is Mark Barnett. He has worked alongside Neil Woodford and has been with Invesco Perpetual since 1996. He runs a similar fund, the Strategic Income Fund, the performance of which has recently outpaced Neil’s fund. The difference between the funds is that Mark Barnett’s fund is much smaller and can invest in smaller companies.

Mark Barnett is a FE Trustnet FE Alpha Manager who has maintained a consistently high alpha score over a proven track record in rising and falling markets.

We have been using the Strategic Income fund for some time are comfortable with the change of manager.

Our recommendation to clients is that there is no need to change anything as a result of the management change.

I shall, of course, be providing monitoring of the situation and will update clients at the next regular portfolio review.