Geoff Wilson, man of the people
Investors can leave, yet the capital never does.
The golden rule? "Move the money from your client's pocket into your pocket," supremely debauched stockbroker Mark Hanna told a green (not yet debauched) Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Now, Geoff Wilson isn't Mark Hanna. Far from it. Wilson's bag isn't mountains of cocaine and exotic dancers, nor does he have a penchant for fraud. But still, Hanna's little maxim does illustrate Wilson Asset Management's self-serving business model.
WAM Capital, the firm's flagship listed investment company, is chaired by Wilson. It pays a percentage of its gross assets, and a slice of the upside whenever its antiquated performance fee structure permits, to a private manager he also owns and controls. Over the three financial years to 2026, WAM Capital paid Wilson's management company $122.4 million, of which $55.7 million was from management fees.
The genius of that, at least from where Wilson sits, is that WAM Capital shareholders can leave, but it won’t dent the management fee base. That's the beauty of LICs, rusted monuments of permanent capital. Redemptions from an ordinary open-ended managed fund, by contrast, reduce the pile of assets its manager can charge for.
Any WAM Capital shareholder who "redeems" receives their proceeds from the buyer of those shares, not from WAM Capital. In effect, Geoff's silver-haired army of delusion is in a lobster pot, and they can only escape the boil should a liver-spotted comrade climb in to take their place.
