The activist hedge-fund manager which forced boardroom change at Alliance Trust has upped its stake in the Scottish investment giant to 19%.
Elliott Advisors – part of New York firm Elliott Management – now owns just under a quarter of the Dundee-based business after increasing its shareholding from 17%, a regulatory filing shows.
Alliance Trust unveiled a change in investment strategy earlier this month, the latest in a string of moves aimed at appeasing investors following a high profile bust-up with Elliott in 2015.
Katherine Garrett-Cox, one of the City’s most high-profile women in business was forced to step down from the group’s main board and then as head of Alliance Trust Investments amid the fallout.
Lord Smith of Kelvin was appointed chairman in February, replacing Karin Forseke, who also stepped down.
Alliance Trust agreed to co-opt two of Elliott’s three nominated independent non-executive directors onto the board, having previously fought against the proposal.
And the group said recently it would outsource the management of its equity investments to eight external managers – a strategy which Elliott said it had “long advocated”.
Elliott pushed for major changes after claiming Alliance Trust had under-performed its peers and benchmarks.
One example of under-performance offered by the hedge-fund manager related to £1,000 being invested in the business around the time of Ms Garrett-Cox’s appointment in 2007.
Elliott said the investment would have grown to £1,671 with Alliance Trust but £1,848 if invested in the global stock market.
In June, Alliance Trust shares surged in value after a company with links to the Rothschild banking dynasty – RIT Capital Partners – confirmed it was in talks about a potential “merger”.
RIT Capital later withdrew from the talks, which came after Cannacord Genuity and other specialist advisers were appointed to advise Alliance Trust on its future direction.
