Elliott Advisers wins shareholder group's backing in Alliance Trust boardroom battle
Influential proxy group Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has thrown its weight behind New York hedge fund Elliott Advisers bid to shake-up the boardroom of £2.9 billion Alliance Trust.
It becomes the third major shareholder advisory group, after ShareSoc and Pirc, to back Elliott’s three nominations to join the giant investment trust at its annual meeting in less than two weeks time.
Elliott has put up City veterans Peter Chambers, Rory Macnamara and Anthony Brooke as new non-executive directors and ISS said that the three men’s experience “would be beneficial to Alliance” and recommend voting for them.
Alliance trust chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox and chairman Karin Forseke are both urging its army of small shareholders to vote against the Elliott candidates and have speeded up moves to find just one new independent director.
ISS points out that Garret-Cox’s pay is 3.2 times that of her equivalents in large investment trusts and notes that she has received at least 50% of her possible bonus in five out of the six years since she was appointed depite the trust underperforming.
It also said that her pay was 20% higher than that of fund manager Henderson’s chief executive Andrew Formica and twice that of Jupiter’s chief executive Maarten Slendebroek, despite the fact that they run funds 13 and six times the size of Alliance.
