Regulations
By Evie Vavasseur
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What W4.0 Actually Does. W4.0 trades under the full name W Four Point Zero FZE LLC and is registered in the United Arab…
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The Injunction the FCA Wants. The FCA isn't just looking for a fine here. It's seeking a court injunction — a legal order that…
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Neil Woodford is back in a courtroom. The Financial Conduct Authority has kicked off civil proceedings against the disgraced fund manager and his platform W4.
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The FCA's core claim is pretty straightforward: Woodford and W4.0 were handing out investment advice and running financial promotions through a subscription website — www.w4pz.
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W4.0 trades under the full name W Four Point Zero FZE LLC and is registered in the United Arab Emirates. The website at the center of all this, www.w4pz.
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Woodford himself needs little introduction to anyone who followed UK retail investing over the past decade.
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So the idea that he's been back in operation, running a paid-for advice and promotions platform from a UAE-registered entity, is going to raise eyebrows. Probably a lot of them.
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More context: FCA Cuts Climate Reporting Burden, Saving UK Investment Firms £20M a Year
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Court approval isn't guaranteed. But the FCA rarely goes for injunctions unless it's fairly confident the activity is ongoing and the risk to consumers is real.
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The broader legal question is whether the subscription model at www.w4pz.com crosses the line into regulated territory. That's not always a clean call.
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No timeline for the proceedings has been made public. No details on how long the site has been running, how many subscribers it had, or how much revenue it generated.
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What's not murky is the FCA's direction of travel. The regulator has spent years trying to close the gap between what unauthorized overseas firms can do and what UK-authorized…
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More context: Securitize Clears SEC Hurdle in SPAC Deal That Could Put Tokenization on the NYSE
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The case will now move through the courts. The injunction request probably gets heard first. After that, the full civil proceedings will determine whether Woodford and W4.
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