Noise Cancelling with Neil Woodford

Why Britain Can't Build a Trillion Dollar Giant

This week, a single American memory chip company became worth more than AstraZeneca, HSBC and Shell combined. So why has Britain never built one of its own? Neil Woodford has spent more than 30 years as one of the largest shareholders in some of Britain's biggest companies. He was a top-five holder of GSK for over a decade. He helped see off Pfizer's bid for AstraZeneca. He's sat across from board after board, telling them what they had to do to be worth more. In this episode of The Noise Cancelling Podcast, he tells the story of how Britain keeps building world-class companies and then throws them away. We cover: 🔹 Why scale isn't the answer (Taiwan built TSMC; South Korea built Samsung and SK Hynix, both worth over $1 trillion) 🔹 The corporate governance trap: why the average FTSE 100 CEO lasts under four years 🔹 BP's third chairman in three years, and what it tells you about UK boards 🔹 The Glaxo (GSK) story: more than fifteen years as a top shareholder, shouted down, sold in frustration in 2017, vindicated five years too late 🔹 AstraZeneca and the 2014 Pfizer bid at £55 — and what's happened to the share price since 🔹 The three things Neil looks for to separate businesses that compound from businesses that waste themselves 🔹 Why Simon Wolfson at Next is the gold standard of British corporate leadership 🔹 How Micron earned its place in Neil's AI picks and shovels thesis 🔹 Whether Britain can ever produce its own trillion dollar company The Noise Cancelling Podcast is a weekly show with Neil Woodford and Jon Adair. Each week we take a piece of confusion in the financial press, teach the mechanism behind it, and give Neil's specific view on what it means for investors. If you got something from this, please subscribe. It helps the channel more than you'd think. And leave a comment below with the British company you reckon should have been a global giant but never made it. Important: Nothing in this video is investment advice. Companies are discussed for educational purposes only. You should consult a regulated financial adviser before making any investment decision. #NeilWoodford #UKStocks #Investing #FTSE100 #StockMarket

The AI IPO Wave Is Coming

SpaceX has filed for IPO. OpenAI and Anthropic are next. The biggest AI listings in history are about to hit US markets — together worth more than the entire FTSE 100. Most of the coverage frames this as confirmation that the AI boom keeps running. Neil Woodford's view is different: the trade may already be more concentrated than investors realise, and where the money flows from here is the question almost nobody is asking. In this week's Noise Cancelling, Neil Woodford and Jon Adair break down what's actually inside your S&P 500 tracker, why your MSCI World fund holds the same AI trade, why the KOSPI has quietly become a Samsung and SK Hynix index, and how the cap-weighted index flywheel runs in both directions. They cover the S&P 500 inclusion rules that will keep OpenAI and SpaceX locked out of the index for years, the source-of-funds problem facing the $300 billion of new equity supply, and why Nvidia's record-beating earnings still couldn't lift the share price after hours. Plus: how this is different from the dotcom bubble, what would change Neil's view, and where he thinks investor attention shifts next — beyond the AI providers, into the companies that deploy AI to transform their own margins.

Why the IMF Is Wrong About Britain (And What To Do About It)

This week the press is unanimous: Britain is uniquely badly positioned, the IMF says so, and the 30-year gilt yield at 5.8% is proof. The Times, the Telegraph and the FT have all run the same story. Neil Woodford disagrees. In this episode, Jon Adair and Neil walk through why the 30-year gilt is the wrong number to look at, why the 10-year — which has been moving in lockstep with US treasuries since 2020 — is what actually matters for UK funding costs, and what the bond market is positioning for when the Iran war ends. What we cover: - Why the DMO has cut long-dated gilt issuance by 80% in a single year - The 10-year UK / US treasury correlation and what's actually changed - What today's UK Q1 GDP data tells us about IMF projections - Why fiscal constraints bind every prime minister, regardless of who's in office - Where rates go when the Iran war ends - Why the markets are still at all-time highs

Forget China. Europe Is The Imbalance That Could Drag Britain Down.

Forget China. The biggest economic imbalance in the world right now is between America and Europe. In 2008, the EU was the same size as the US. Today it is 41% smaller. This week, Neil Woodford and Jon Adair go through the €220bn surplus the financial press isn't covering, the European savings paradox Brussels can't explain, and why a Labour push to rejoin the EU would be one of the worst economic decisions Britain has made in 50 years. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a recent IIF audience that China's $1 trillion trade surplus is the central global imbalance. The maths says he is looking in the wrong place. Europe's surplus with the US is the harder one to explain (a continent with the most generous safety net in the world saving like it has none) and the only one with a realistic chance of being addressed. Mario Draghi published 383 recommendations to fix the European economy in September 2024. Two years later, only 11% have been implemented. Neil walks through what this means for Europe, for the UK, and for anyone thinking about the UK rejoining the EU. 🔗 Links & Resources - Earlier episode on Europe's energy vulnerability: https://youtu.be/-LypKyR2B8A?si=qSvcLXoCQdnNWXad [https://youtu.be/-LypKyR2B8A?si=qSvcLXoCQdnNWXad]  - Neil's blog on Brexit (November 2025): https://www.woodfordviews.com/post/brexit-a-convenient-and-popular-scapegoat [https://www.woodfordviews.com/post/brexit-a-convenient-and-popular-scapegoat]  - Mario Draghi report (September 2024): https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-report_en [https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-report_en]

The blockade is working. The cartel is breaking. Oil is going down.

Brent jumped 7% yesterday to over $120. The consensus says oil is heading higher and the UK is heading into stagflation. We think the consensus is wrong about oil — and wrong in two directions at once. Underneath this week's headlines, two mechanisms are working against the prevailing narrative. The blockade of Iran is doing exactly what it was designed to do — Iranian storage is filling, wells will have to shut, and the regime is losing $400 million a day in revenue. At the same time, OPEC is fragmenting in public. The UAE has walked out. Russia's finance minister has gone on the record telling his own budget to brace for lower prices. And the question of whether Saudi Arabia eventually follows the UAE is now genuinely on the table. In this episode of The Noise Cancelling Podcast, Neil Woodford and Jon Adair walk through how the war actually ends, why losing the UAE breaks OPEC's pricing power, what happens when the blockade and the cartel collide, and why the Bank of England's decision today maps onto exactly the view we've been arguing for weeks. Neil's medium-term view: the structural pull is downward. Brent could trade well below $50 a barrel. About The Noise Cancelling Podcast A weekly investment show that cuts through the noise of financial markets. Neil Woodford and Jon Adair on what the headlines miss and what it means for your money.