Alliance Trust buys back £68m shares
ALLIANCE Trust has bought back almost £70m of its stock since February to improve its share price, it said yesterday.
The trust, which battled activist fund Laxey Partners over the gap between its share price and net asset value until May, bought and cancelled 18.1m shares by 25 May for £67.7m.
The buybacks reduced its share price discount to 15.3 per cent, up from 17-20 per cent over the past year.
Alliance opposed Laxey’s call for a formal buyback mechanism but shifted strategy in February to accept buybacks and now uses them to keep the discount at about 15 per cent.
“The step-change in the company’s active use of buybacks in recent months will continue,” it said in its interim management statement.