Activist Saba Capital doubles holding in Syncona

(Sharecast News) - Activist investor Saba Capital Management has turned its attention to yet another City investment trust, after building up a stake of just over 10% in Syncona.

Confirming the position after markets closed on Thursday evening, the life sciences specialist said the American hedge fund, which is led by Boaz Weinstein, had increased its holding to 10.02% from 5.19%.

It is the latest firm to attract the attention of Saba, which is taking advantage of high discounts to aggressively buy up stakes in British investment trusts and demand change.

Last week, Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust's board was ousted after a prolonged campaign by Saba, with the fund's nomination, Gabriel Gliksberg, confirmed as chair on Friday. Its long-running standoff with Herald Investment Trust also came to an end this week after a sweeping deal with Aberdeen Group was agreed.

On Friday it also emerged that Saba was ramping up its campaign against serviced office provider Workspace Group, a real estate investment trust, demanding that five non-executive directors be removed from the board.

According to CNBC, Saba has now built positions in nearly 50 London-listed funds.

Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, said: "Saba continues to build stakes in targets ripe for disruption.

"The latest is Syncona. Last October, Syncona said it would return £250m to shareholders by selling certain private portfolio investments to help maximise value for investors. It clearly isn't going far enough if Saba is buying more shares. The stake building implies the activists might want to leverage its position as a major shareholder to make demands on the company."

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