Edinburgh Investment Trust PLC Share News (EDIN)

The shocking resignation of Invesco Perpetual's superstar fund manager Neil Woodford, who manages almost 30bn pounds spread out over five funds, has had repercussions across the industry. Two listed vehicles in particular, Perpetual's US parent Invesco and FTSE 250-listed Edinburgh Investment Trust, have seen their shares slide after Woodford announced he was leaving in April to set up his own business focused on longer-term investing."My decision to leave is a personal one based on my views about where I see long-term opportunities in the fund management industry," he explained. "My intention is to establish a new fund management business serving institutional and retail clients as soon as possible after April 29th 2014," he said, adding that he would elaborate once he had left Invesco.Woodford manages Invesco Perpetual 's High Income fund and Income funds, the UK equity components of the Monthly Income Plus fund and the Invesco Perpetual Distribution fund, together with St James's Place fund mandates and the Edinburgh investment trust.Shares in New York-listed Invesco were down 6.4% on Wednesday, as the company and its investors must be fearing even worse outflows than those seen at rival Schroders, which sluiced out over £1.1bn in the quarter after its own star fund manager Richard Buxton left in March.Buxton managed a comparatively tiny £4bn compared to Woodford's economy-sized domain, which represents around half the entire funds managed at Invesco's UK office. The London-listed Edinburgh investment trust is relatively much smaller in comparison, at not much over £1bn after its shares fell a further 4.4% on Wednesday after losing 5% the day before, but it has a unique power that much larger Invesco does not. Woodford remains at the helm of the trust for now, and the unique structure of investment trusts means that there is a possibility that Woodford could continue as manager once he leaves Invesco. Investment trusts are structured with a board of directors that appoints an investment management company, which in this case is Invesco. But if an individual manager leaves, the board of the trust can switch control of its investments over to wherever he or she moves.Even though the board pointed out in a statement on Wednesday that there was no immediate change it was not enough to persuade some investors not to beat a retreat.The share price fall puts the fund at a discount of 3.1%, which analysts at Investec put in perspective by noting that the widest level of discount the fund has traded at since 2010 is around 4.1%.In charge of the trust since 2008, Woodford has delivered a share price return of 143% and net asset value growth of 108.5% over the last five years. The board said it will "carefully" review options with Invesco and its proposed individual replacement, but the discount looks likely to endure for a while, especially with Investec suggesting that as investment houses whip Edinburgh off their buy lists, it will "remove some of the natural buyers from the market".