Saba Capital, the activist hedge fund led by Boaz Weinstein, has won a dramatic victory in its long-running campaign against the board of Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust.
Shareholders in Edinburgh Worldwide voted Thursday for Saba Capital’s plan to oust EWIT chair Jonathan Simpson-Dent — and five other board members — and to install three Saba-backed board nominees.
The result gives Weinstein’s firm control of Baillie Gifford-run EWIT, which is focused on cutting-edge public and private technology companies and which offers rare public-market access to SpaceX.
SpaceX, whose private market valuation has soared ahead of an imminent IPO, is EWIT’s largest holding, at about 20% of its portfolio.
It has been a key flashpoint in the protracted boardroom battle, with Weinstein criticizing the board’s decision to sell down a portion of the investment last year.
Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust (EWIT).
EWIT generated a staggering 947% return on SpaceX since 2018, on what was then a “speculative” tech bet, Simpson-Dent told CNBC in December.
Weinstein also blasted EWIT’s large discount to net asset value, since narrowed, describing it in a November letter as “unprecedented value destruction.”
Saba now plans to put itself forward as the next manager of EWIT, keeping the fund listed in London but overhauling its strategy.
The trust would pivot to a portfolio largely made up of UK-listed investment trusts with a global remit, while targeting a single-digit discount to NAV through an active share buyback program, Saba said in an open letter to shareholders on Tuesday.
The victory, which was set to be announced at EWIT’s annual general meeting later Thursday after the board conceded it did not have the numbers to defeat Saba’s motion, reflects a decisive shift in the trust’s shareholder base.
Retail and private wealth investors have steadily offloaded their positions throughout the wrangle, making way for U.S. institutional funds to move in. Four U.S. institutional funds, which made up 40% of the share base, voted against the board, according to EWIT.
‘Repeated attacks’
The transatlantic tussle has seen each side accuse the other of misleading investors, following two earlier unsuccessful attempts by Weinstein to overhaul the board.
Ahead of the vote to oust him, chair Simpson-Dent said EWIT’s individual retail and private wealth shareholders had been “ground down” by “repeated attacks” from the U.S. hedge fund manager, and “replaced by institutions seeking to capture the upside potential in EWIT’s substantial SpaceX exposure.”
“This is a disappointing day for our long-standing shareholders who are set to lose exposure to this exciting mandate focused on next-generation technology, seemingly in favour of Saba’s plan to invest in other U.K. investment trusts,” Simpson-Dent said in a statement ahead of Thursday’s result.
“This should represent a wake-up call for the investment trust sector and its regulators.”
But Saba — which earlier this week revealed how it would manage EWIT in the event of victory — blasted Simpson-Dent.
“This is the same chairman who presided over a five-year loss that ranked EWI dead last – 66th out of 66 – among its peers in a period when global equity markets delivered substantial gains,” the fund said in a statement Tuesday.
Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at A.J. Bell, said the win is likely to reverberate across the boardrooms of other U.K. investment trusts, where its research suggests Saba has holdings in more than 40 such listed vehicles.
“If the investment trust industry thought it had successfully batted off the challenge posed by activist Saba, then today’s news is a rude awakening,” Hewson said, comparing the activist investor’s persistence to “a dog with a bone.”
