Alasdair Glass article published in Investment Week

Alasdair's article was published in Investment Week, 23 June 2026, here.

The FCA has moved against Neil Woodford for a second time. For investors, the pressing question is not the headline but whether they have any route to recover losses if the allegations are proved.

The FCA’s decision, announced on 8 June 2026, to seek an injunction against Neil Woodford and his new platform, W4.0, to prevent them carrying out allegedly unauthorised regulated activities has obvious regulatory significance. More important for users of W4.0's service is what it means for them. With memories still fresh of the collapsed Woodford Equity Income Fund and the £46 million in penalties the FCA has proposed (currently under appeal), it poses a familiar question: when the regulator targets conduct at the regulatory perimeter, are private claims an inevitable second wave?

W4.0, the trading name of the UAE-registered W Four Point Zero FZE LLC, provides a subscription-based platform by which retail clients can access Mr Woodford's investment research and strategies. The FCA alleges that, by way of this service, W4.0 and Mr Woodford have provided regulated investment advice without authorisation, breaching the general prohibition in section 19 FSMA, and made financial promotions without approval, contrary to section 21.

W4.0 rejects the FCA’s characterisation, stressing that it informs users plainly that it is not regulated and gives no advice. But the label is not decisive. What matters is the substance - did W4.0 in fact advise subscribers on whether to buy, sell or hold particular investments (including by way of any model portfolios)? If it did, calling its service ‘research’ will not prevent a finding against it. The answer turns on what W4.0 actually published, and its effect on the reader.

If the regulatory perimeter was crossed, there are two main recovery angles for subscribers:

1. agreements made by an unauthorised firm are generally unenforceable under FSMA (subject to the court’s discretion and certain exceptions), so a subscriber can reclaim what they paid W4.0, i.e. the subscription fees.
2. There is, as yet, no suggestion that subscribers to W4.0's service have suffered losses on their investments. But the design of the service shows where potential claims could arise: If W4.0’s material is found to have crossed the line from research into regulated advice, the subscription model creates a further litigation risk: advice distributed to all subscribers alike could not have been tailored to each investor’s circumstances, increasing the scope for claims that particular subscribers were led into unsuitable investments. However, to recover losses on such investments from W4.0, it is likely that in most cases they would need to bring a civil claim (such as for negligence or misrepresentation). Those claims would face significant hurdles including any exclusions or limitations of liability in the contractual documents, and are exactly what W4.0's disclaimers are designed to avoid. The paradox is that an unauthorised firm such as W4.0, which may be more susceptible to actionable claims, attracts none of the usual safety nets - no FSCS and no Financial Ombudsman - leaving a subscriber potentially worse protected than if W4.0 had been regulated. W4.0, an offshore entity and potentially thinly capitalised, is likely to be a difficult enforcement target, pushing potential claimants towards onshore or insured targets such as Mr Woodford personally (which the contractual framework is unlikely to facilitate) or authorised firms they dealt with in respect of those investments.

What to do now. For investors, the priorities, pending the outcome of the FCA's injunction against Mr Woodford and W4.0, are straightforward:

• Audit your exposure — identify which holdings you bought after following a W4.0 strategy, any losses on them, and the fees you paid.
• Preserve the paper trail — keep subscription records, the communications, marketing materials and recommendations you received, and fees paid.

But temper expectations. A win for the FCA would supply a ready-made factual narrative and a tested view of where the regulatory perimeter lies but it would not establish a subscriber’s own claim.  Recovering any investment losses would mean clearing the hurdles referred to above and each case would need to be proved on the facts.  This episode is unlikely to spawn claims on anything like the same scale as the collapse of the Woodford Equity Income Fund, and indeed the FCA's injunction may have the effect of preventing losses from occurring in the first place.