Leigh Day issue court proceedings against Link

Leigh Day issued court proceedings against Link on Monday 27 September 2021. 

This is a huge step forward in getting compensation for the many thousands of unfortunates who lost money in Woodford’s WEIF funds. Leigh Day’s issuing of proceedings is a big milestone.

We are concerned, however, that roughly only 5-10% of the 270,000 or so investors seem to have joined any claim so far. We urge all WEIF investors to join a claim. We believe that Leigh Day are streets ahead of other mooted actions – Leigh Day and Harcus Parker are the only ones to date that are truly no-win-no-fee with expenses completely funded and costs insured, but Leigh Day’s fees are capped at 30% whereas as far as I know, Harcus Parker’s fee deal is 42% plus disbursements, ie more (perhaps significantly more) than 42%.

Progress to date demonstrates clearly that ShareSoc correctly endorsed the Leigh Day claim, last year, as the best claim for Woodford investors.

Law firm Leigh Day have now officially started court proceedings against Link Fund Solutions Limited (LFS) – which oversaw the fund on behalf of investors.  Leigh Day has issued a claim form on behalf of an initial group of 100 investors and said it will be will be issuing proceedings on a rolling basis for all of its clients, which number more than 11,000.

Leigh Day claims LFS breached the financial regulator’s rules by allowing the fund to hold too many illiquid investments and that this ultimately led to the fund’s collapse. Leigh Day is bringing legal action against LFS because it is the ‘authorised corporate director’ of the fund and was responsible for ensuring that it was managed in a way that complied with the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules. The move follows a ‘detailed and extensive’ letter before action and ‘significant pre-action correspondence’ which Leigh Day has had with LFS’ lawyers, Clifford Chance.

LFS has made clear its intent to defend the claims ‘vigorously’, Leigh Day said. It could still be years until claimants receive payments.

Leigh Day’s  Press Release is here . See https://www.leighday.co.uk/latest-updates/news/2021-news/leigh-day-takes-link-to-court-to-claim-losses-suffered-by-investors-in-the-woodford-equity-income-fund/

The FT have already picked up the story. https://www.ftadviser.com/investments/2021/09/27/woodford-case-against-link-goes-to-court/

as have the Daily Mail https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-10033715/Woodford-investors-day-court.html, which quotes ShareSoc Director Cliff Weight.

The Leigh Day Press release mentions our webinar on Thursday, https://www.sharesoc.org/events/woodford-what-happens-next30-september-2021/ to which we currently have 351 registrants. With this great news we hope to get many more. Please register and listen in. Tell your friends and family who have invested to register too.

If you have not already joined the ShareSoc Woodford Campaign, please join. You do not have to have been a Woodford investor to join, but if you support our goals of improving the way funds are regulated and holding to account those who do wrong, we want and  need you to register your support of our objectives by joining the campaign. The more people we have in the campaign the more lobbying power we will have. Join here https://www.sharesoc.org/campaigns/woodford-campaign/#join2  We now have over 1,043 campaign members, but we need many more to join. Up to 500,000 lost money investing in Woodford. Ideally all should join the campaign to stop it happening again and seek redress for those who lost out.

This is an official ShareSoc News Item written by Sharesoc Woodford Campaign Director Cliff Weight.

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