American hedge fund relaunches campaign against Scottish investment trust
The American hedge fund tycoon behind a years-long assault on Britain’s investment trust industry has revived his campaign against a Baillie Gifford-run fund less than a month after being resoundingly defeated by shareholders at a crunch meeting.
Saba Capital founder Boaz Weinstein shared an open letter to investors in the Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust (Ewit), in which he repeated his “longstanding concerns” about the trust’s underperformance and told shareholders they “deserve better than the status quo”.
The US activist hedge fund, which is Ewit’s largest shareholder and has trained its sights on several struggling trusts in the past year and a half, used the missive to propose an overhaul of the trust’s board that would see shareholders appoint three independent directors.
“A board’s role is to protect investors’ capital, address underperformance and portfolio management missteps, and prioritise value creation,” Weinstein wrote. “Unfortunately, the current Board has fallen short across these responsibilities.”
Last month, Saba, which owns 30 per cent of Ewit shares, called a requisitioned general meeting at which it tabled similar resolutions, one of which proposed removing the entire board and replacing it with candidates of Saba’s choosing.
Some 93 per cent of voting shareholders, excluding Saba, voted against the hedge fund’s proposal. Including votes from Weinstein’s fund, that number fell to 53 per cent.
“After just 53.2 per cent of shares voted chose to stick with the status quo at the January 2026 requisitioned general meeting, we believe a meaningful portion of shareholders remain unhappy,” Weinstein wrote. “As a result, we believe shareholders would benefit from having a refreshed board composed of directors who possess objective viewpoints, hands-on investment management experience and an understanding of shareholders’ perspectives.”
Saba: Investment trust’s sale of Space X ‘defied commercial logic’
Saba’s complaints centre around an investment decision from its Baillie Gifford fund managers to sell down its stake in Elon Musk’s space start-up, Space X, shortly before it fetched a $800bn (£540bn) valuation at a December funding round. At the time, Weinstein railed against the move, saying it “defied commercial logic”.
In his Tuesday letter, Weinstein addressed Musk’s recent decision to merge Space X with his artificial intelligence venture, xAI, which is poised to add a further $700bn to the combined entity.
He said: “The recent reports that Space X plans to participate in the biggest merger of all time – ahead of a potential IPO later this year – only underscore the magnitude of the lost upside.”
The relaunched offensive is the latest attempt by Weinstein’s Saba to force through radical changes at an investment trust, just over a year on from the activist fund first taking up large stakes in heavily discounted listed funds to push through governance reforms.
Between 2024 and 2025, he proposed a string of resolutions at meetings at nine closed-end funds, many of which were roundly rejected by investors after a fierce rearguard action from the investment trust sector.
A spokeswoman for Ewit said: “Since shareholders rejected its resolutions on 20 January, the Board has made a number of attempts to engage with Saba and its advisers. On every occasion, Saba has failed to engage.
“The board will update shareholders on its plans in the near future.”