Woodford's entire portfolio revealed

Almost one third of the portfolio is made up of healthcare-related stocks, following one of the key themes of his Invesco funds, with consumer goods and consumer services stocks making up 20 per cent of his portfolio including one major consumer retail play in the form of Next.

Alongside the expected helping of solid income producing stocks and global healthcare plays such as top ten holdings AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco, Mr Woodford has also made significant bets on companies that incubate, support and invest in new technologies.

This is illustrated by the presence of Imperial Innovations in his top ten holdings as well as Allied Minds, a Boston-based company which commercialises university inventions, at number 11 in his portfolio with a holding equivalent to 2.9 per cent of the total. Allied floated in London in June.

Healthcare remains a major theme with Mr Woodford taking positions in the likes of Roche, Sanofi, Nasdaq-quoted Prothena and Alkermes as well as smaller UK biotech-type businesses such as e-therapeutics, ReNeuron, Oxford Pharmascience and Retroscreen Virology.

Mr Woodford has only one bank in his portfolio in the form of HSBC, which he is probably holding for its dividend, but he does hold a number of other financial companies including IC tips Provident Financial and Burford Capital and insurance companies such as Legal & General, Lancashire, Amlin, Catlin, Hiscox and Beazley.

New issues also feature relatively prominently in the lower reaches of Mr Woodford’s portfolio including pallet business RM2 International, which floated around the turn of the year, allergy specialist Circassia, motoring services business AA and breakthrough washing machine technology business Xeros.

An IC reader commented on our website: "I don't know why he doesn't hold Royal Dutch Shell or National Grid. Both are good dividend payers."

Mr Woodford refused to comment directly on Shell or National Grid. However, his spokesperson said: "Re utilities you could say it's 'understood that he likes' Centrica based on valuation (bid target) and Drax". He also directed us to an article from 2011, in which Mr Woodford warned BP and Shell were not attractive even with higher oil prices.

The Woodford Equity Income fund will publish a full list of its holdings every month, breaking away from the funds industry norm of only publicly disclosing a fund's top 10 holdings.

Mr Woodford said: "I think the fund mangement industry has a tradition of not communicating terribly well with its client base. Certainly, portfolio information has been dribbled out semi-reluctantly and typically the information that does come out is often very out of date. We believe that our clients have a right to know what we are doing with their money."

Also see our interview with Neil Woodford