Investment trusts can be reluctant to ring the changes, so the upheaval at Alliance Trust in recent years has stood out among its peers (Greig Cameron writes). This week’s sale of its savings division is but the latest in a series of big, and important, strategic calls.
It’s not hard to trace the origins of Alliance’s activity. The trust — formed in Dundee in 1888 via a merger of three mortgage and land-owning companies — is a constituent of the FTSE 250 index and has an enviable track record of increasing its dividend, going back more than 50 years. But not everyone was satisfied. Elliott Advisors, that most active of activist hedge funds, began agitating for change after taking a stake in 2012.
Elliott felt