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Investor lines up behind Elliott’s trio: Elliott Advisors’ campaign to shake up the boardroom at Alliance Trust has been boosted after Tilney Bestinvest decided to vote in favour of the election of three fresh independent directors at a showdown shareholder meeting next week.
ISS lands heavyweight punches on Alliance: Leading investor research group ISS has thrown its weight behind Elliott Advisors in the activist’s challenge to the governance and strategy of Alliance Trust.
Katherine the Great’ braces for Alliance Trust invasion: Dundee is famous for jute, jam and journalism. Jousting can now be added to that alliterative list, thanks to an activist tilt at Alliance Trust, a £2.9 billion investment trust headquartered in the city. The challenger, Elliott Advisors, is gaining impetus as it thunders towards a shareholder vote on April 29. The support of ISS, an influential adviser on these contests, has added to its momentum. The clash is cultural as well as financial. Ms Garrett-Cox has a regal manner, inspiring wags to nickname her “Katherine the Great” after a Russian empress who also had a penchant for empire building. Elliott’s U.K. Chief Mark Levine is a hard-nosed Wall Streeter from New Jersey. Ms Garrett-Cox’s would put her in the line of danger if a majority of investors show they agree with Elliott and ISS that Alliance Trust has big defects. The first flaw is poor performance. ISS says the generalist trust has lagged behind peers by 35.2% over three years. The second is high costs. ISS believes these have been increased by lossmaking ventures and managing money in-house. The third is high fixed pay. According to ISS, Ms Garrett-Cox gets 20% more than the Boss of Henderson, a much bigger fund Manager. Alliance Trust disputes the independence of the trio, because Elliott picked them. You could make the same criticism of any independent Director, selected in the conventional way by a company board.
According to the Daily Telegraph, "Alliance Trust, the facts: it HAS underperformed in 8 of the last 10 years". " Telegraph Money view However you slice the data, Alliance Trust has been a mediocre to poor performer for many years. No performance measures, not even those summoned by Alliance's own board in its defence, demonstrate a clearly sustained improvement in performance since Katherine Garrett-Cox took office in 2008. Although the board's claims of recently improved performance are borne out in the latest statistics, these are short time periods upon which to pin any hopes of a decided turnaround. The trust has altered its personnel and approach frequently in recent years, itself a cause of concern for shareholders. Ms Garrett-Cox has had sufficient time in which to demonstrate a clear, new path for Alliance, but has failed to. Many shareholders are very committed to this trust, having inherited shareholdings which they hope never to sell. They have cause to question their loyalty to the current management."
Elliot hedge fund hit back at Alliance Trust, saying its damning shareholder circular "fails to engage on matter of substance and resorts to personal attacks in a manner unbecoming of directors of a public company".
Katherine Garrett-Cox shortlisted for award: Alliance Trust Chief Executive Katherine Garrett-Cox, who is fighting attempts by an activist investor to shake up the Dundee-based firm’s board, is in the running for a prestigious award.
"Alliance Trust board deserves an active kick up the backside"
Alliance Trust hit by bombshell from ex-Director: A former Director of Alliance Trust has written a bombshell letter to shareholders bemoaning the company’s “dismal” performance and suggesting that its £1.4 million-a-year Boss, Katherine Garrett-Cox, is overpaid.
I will vote with the board as like buying large marketable IT, with good dividend growth record, at a discount.
Justifiable tilt at Alliance Trust will succeed if anyone’s for Dennis: Alliance is from Dundee like DC Thomson, publisher of The Beano, in whose pages Walter and Dennis play out their Manichean struggle. The investment company is also a survivor from an earlier, simpler age. No one would set up a conservative, equities-focused investment trust these days. The same job is done more efficiently by mutual and exchange traded funds. Yet Alliance has about £2.8 billion under management. This makes Chief Executive Katherine Garrett-Cox one of the U.K.’s most prominent investment Bosses. The vulnerability of the group, akin to Walter’s fear of fisticuffs, is the 13-14% discount at which the shares trade compared to their net asset value. The verdict this passes on the skills of Ms Garrett-Cox and her investment Managers is unflattering. Elliott is catapulting numbers at Alliance rather than fruit and pulses. The activist, which owns about 5% of the trust, is telling the City that Alliance undershot its benchmark by roughly 4.2 percentage points in 2014. Costs, Elliott is likely to argue, are almost 10 times higher than some comparatives. Alliance cannot brush Elliott off by acceding to its demands while claiming to be standing firm. The U.S. activist has made no clear demands. But Elliott would surely approve of the outsourcing of investment management and a shake-up of the board. Its push for a debate on Alliance’s raison d’être deserves support. Dennis the democrat? Wonders will never cease.
the savings arm must be worth a few bob all the money thats been spent on it and the personel changes must be near slowing down its a pity hargreaves hates investment trusts
Elliott Advisers said it has nominated three candidates for the board of Alliance Trust, claiming the trust has consistently underperformed and continues to make losses via its two operating subsidiaries.
The horse has bolted. One to put in your shopping list when there is a really big correction!
Why are you "testing" on this board. Please post your rubbish somewhere else.
Alliance Trust (ATST) Director name: Mr Alastair Kerr Amount purchased: 3,000 @ 367.27p Value: £11,018
Top Director Buys Alliance Trust (ATST) Director name: Mr Karin Forseke Amount purchased: 11,900 @ 366.11p Value: £43,567
Long-term winners So which of today's businesses look set to stand the test of time? One obvious avenue to consider is Britain's rich seam of investment trusts. Several are themselves well over a hundred years old: Alliance Trust (LSE: ATST) and Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust (LSE: FRCL), for instance, date back to 1888 and 1868 respectively. Monks (LSE: MNKS) dates back to 1929. Scottish Mortgage (LSE: SMT) has been riding out uncertain economic conditions since 1909. Hunting The 100 Year Old Share http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=alliance%20trust%20(atst)&source=newssearch&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CDEQqQIwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.co.uk%2Fnews%2Finvesting%2F2012%2F05%2F04%2Fhunting-the-100-year-share.aspx&ei=X6ykT7r2KIn28gPot4DXBA&usg=AFQjCNEmRGy246xQamdZXnTzWBepMwGeYw Also, Here's a couple of links about SCLP, one of the hottest stocks at the moment: http://www.euroinvestor.com/community/discussionthread.aspx?threadid=252803 http://www.euroinvestor.com/community/discussionthread.aspx?threadid=253089
me as well, this share should be so much better , its dragged on for years
Phoned us here too. What a waste. Presumably they're worried! Mind you its Laxey wasting our money by having the votes in the first place.
Me too - I told the caller to tell the Board to stop wasting shareholders' money sending out more AGM forms to fill in and then phoning them to ask about where they intend to vote - sort yourselves out Alliance Board or you will be ousted as the returns to shareholders over past 5 years have been very average and you are paying yourselves far too much money, as usual!!
Someone from ALLIANCE TRUST recently phoned me, trying to find out how I intended to vote on the Critical motion at the upcoming AGM........... This has never happened to me before!............. Does it show that ALLIANCE bigwigs are becoming worried
LAXEY Partners, the activist investor trying to force change at Alliance Trust, has raised the prospect of a boardroom reshuffle at the 123-year-old Dundee firm if the current management fails to appease shareholders concerned over the firm’s share discount. Isle of Man-based Laxey, which holds a 1.7 per cent stake in the investment trust, has upped its campaign to coerce Alliance chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox to agree an automatic share buyback policy – or discount control mechanism (DCM) – ahead of a crucial vote next month, reports Scotland on Sunday.
Katherine Garrett-Cox, chief executive of Alliance Trust (ATST), declared that she was confident of fending off activist investors who are pushing for changes to the way the long-established investment trust is run. Announcing a 3% full-year dividend increase, Ms Garrett-Cox argued for a rejection of a resolution put forward by Alliance Trust dissidents for its annual meeting on 20th May 2011. Alliance shares pushed back 3.7p to 371.4p.
Alliance delivers total return of 18.7% Date: Tuesday 12 Apr 2011 LONDON (ShareCast) - Third party assets under management at investment company Alliance Trust soared last year while the company's investment strategy delivered positive absolute returns across all regions. Third party assets under management rose to £83m at the end of January 2011 from £12m a year earlier, and have reached £100m since then. The company, which is changing its year-end this year to end-December, saw its net asset value per share rise 16.2% over the year to 439.0p. With full year dividend payments of 8.395p factored in the total return for the year was 18.7%. The fourth quarter dividend in respect of fiscal 2011/11 was 2.2075p. The full year dividend is up 3% on the previous year's pay out of 8.15p and represents the 44th consecutive year of dividend growth. Performance was helped by a share buy-back programme that saw the company buy almost 9.6m of its own shares at a weighted average cost of 335p and a weighted discount to net asset value of 21%. Improvements at Alliance Trust Savings resulted in a reduction in losses by 30% and a 28% increase in revenues to £12.8m. The company said 44% of Alliance Trust Savings' clients are now shareholders in Alliance Trust. Net debt was increased by £127m to £247m. Net gearing stood at 11% at the year end. “The near term outlook for stock markets remains clouded by a number of uncertainties, including geo-political risks, rising commodity prices and a global consumer burdened by debt. However, we are optimistic on the prospects for global equities and believe we can exploit the volatility to build long-term positions. We see the best growth prospects in the Emerging Markets and will continue to increase exposure to take advantage of long-term growth opportunities in these regions," said chief executive, Katherine Garrett-Cox. --- jh
the giant stirs! Just noticed on 21 mar buys back shares. Will discount finally budge?