20th Mar 2015 07:52
LONDON (Alliance News) - Alliance Trust PLC Friday struck back in the battle against Elliot Advisors (UK) Ltd, calling the activist investor's move to make changes to its board "completely unacceptable" and advising other shareholders to vote against the proposals.
Elliot, which has built up a 12% stake in Alliance Trust, wants the company to appoint former SG Warburg executive Anthony Brooke, ex-CEO of Legal & General Investment Management Peter Chambers, and Rory Macnamara, previously of Morgan Grenfell, to the board of Alliance Trust.
The shareholder has also criticised Alliance Trust's performance and highlighted losses in its investments and savings subsidiaries. It has also raised concerns about the "high and inflexible nature of the cost of the trust's internal investment management function".
Alliance Trust moved to refute the claims on Friday, with its chair calling Elliott's proposals "completely unacceptable".
"The board believes that they (the proposals) are a pre-cursor for further disruptive actions from Elliott which are likely to focus solely on engineering an exit from their shareholding and would not be in the interests of all of our shareholders," Alliance Trust Chair Karin Forseke said in a statement.
"We do not consider their proposed directors to be independent and believe that Alliance Trust's current board is diverse, dynamic and more than fit for purpose. We pride ourselves on our transparency and honesty with all our shareholders, and as a board we will not lie down and allow one shareholder to dictate the future of Alliance Trust," Forseke said.
"Our focus is on delivering returns to all our shareholders through a combination of strong investment performance and the development of our subsidiary businesses, which we believe will lead to a sustainable narrowing of the discount," Forseke added.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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