THE fund formerly run by under-fire manager Neil Woodford has slashed the value of its stake in a Brad Pitt-backed nuclear energy company.
Woodford Patient Capital Trust, which is under new management, cut the valuation of its holding in Industrial Heat, an unproved cold fusion venture, by £45 million.
Alongside the 5p-per-share write-down, the fund announced a 0.7p increase in how it values another unnamed investment. Taken together this means a net loss of £39 million for the fund.
It is the second time that Mr Woodford's former fund has written down Industrial Heat, which plans to develop a controversial and unproven nuclear technology.
Cold fusion would theoretically revolutionise energy production, producing nuclear power without heat waste. However, many scientists are sceptical that the technology can be developed.
The fund took a £30 million write-down, or 3.7p per share, on the company in August this year.
The Woodford funds own around a quarter of Industrial Heat, which was once valued at nearly €1 billion (£774 million).
Other investors include actor Pitt, and the widow of former Apple boss Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs.
The company has raised around $100m (£77m) to develop cold fusion.
Once run by City superstar Neil Woodford, Woodford Patient Capital Trust was renamed Schroder UK Public Private Trust after its new managers when Mr Woodford stepped down.
Questions were raised over its future when a sister fund was forced to ban investors from withdrawing their money in June.
Mr Woodford had been criticised for locking too much money into illiquid investments which could not be exchanged for cash quickly.
This meant the fund was unable to honour investors' requests to give their money back in time.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here