Woodford hits out at Osborne's cut15 Jul 2015 01:59
Woodford hits out at Osborne's cut in renewal energy tax break
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has lost the support of at least one large U.K. investor after his decision last week to eliminate a tax break for renewal energy sent shares of Drax Group Plc tumbling.
Fund manager Neil Woodford, who has more than 11 billion pounds ($17 billion) invested mostly in U.K. companies including Drax, said cutting the tax exemption for renewable energy companies had “profound consequences” for future investment behavior.
“If government cannot be trusted not to fulfill its long-term commitments, then it will have to accept that it cannot rely on support from institutional investors,” Woodford, 55, said on his blog. “That would not be a good outcome for the U.K. economy.”
Osborne’s decision to remove the exemption from the Climate Change Levy comes as the government looks to private investors to fund infrastructure. Munich-based Allianz SE, one of the biggest institutional investors in clean energy, said last year that a lack of political support was undermining further investments in projects.
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Woodford, who has seen his 5.3 percent stake in Drax fall by more than 25 percent in value since Osborne’s announcement, sent a letter to the government after the budget. Drax, based in North Yorkshire, England, is converting the biggest U.K. coal station to burning wood pellets, considered a renewable fuel.
The former Invesco Perpetual fund manager said about 1 billion pounds of shareholder money was invested in Drax on the premise of “long-term commitment” from the government.
“This latest example of back-pedaling demonstrates that government believes that policy can be amended to suit changing political priorities without due consideration” for the economy or privately funded infrastructure projects, Woodford wrote.
Drax has converted two of its six units to burn biomass with plans to bring a third online by 2016. Removal of the levy, an indirect subsidy for clean power, would result in generators losing as much as 6 pounds a megawatt-hour they produce.