Baillie Gifford in line for Anthropic windfall just months after £3.6bn SpaceX bonanza Investing Scottish investment shop Baillie Gifford is in line to more than triple its money on its stakes in Anthropic when the AI juggernaut floats on the stock market this summer, just months after netting a £3.6bn gain on its historic SpaceX punt. Three of the Edinburgh-based asset manager’s flagship trusts could use Anthropic’s eagerly awaited [...]
Herald trust saved after Saba and Aberdeen ink deal Investing Aberdeen and US activist hedge fund Saba have reached agreement for the Scottish investment juggernaut to manage Herald Investment Trust, ending a years-long arm wrestle over the trust’s future. In an eleventh-hour deal that will save Herald from being wound down, Aberdeen will recruit eight of the fund’s staff – including fund manager Katie Potts [...]
Saba Capital loses double vote on Baillie Gifford trust takeovers Investing Saba Capital has lost two more votes in the US hedge fund’s campaign to take over a variety of UK investment trusts, leaving its campaign looking increasingly unlikely to succeed. Two trusts run by Baillie Gifford, Keystone Positive Change and Baillie Gifford US Growth, voted today to reject Saba’s proposal to unseat their boards and [...]
Digital 9 Infrastructure: Investec slams ‘shocking’ asset sale January 23, 2025 Investec analysts have slammed the sale of Digital 9 Infrastructure’s assets as part of the investment trust’s wind-down, describing the process as “extremely poor for shareholders”. Digital 9, once a darling of the infrastructure sector, fell into chaos after governance concerns and funding problems emerged throughout 2023. The trust voted to wind down in March [...]
Blackrock trusts agree peace deal with Saba Capital January 22, 2025 A host of Blackrock-run investment trusts have made a peace deal with US hedge fund Saba Capital, amid its activist campaign to take over the boards of several UK trusts. In a series of stock exchange announcements, the Blackrock trusts said that they had made an agreement with Saba to be left alone by the [...]
Four investment trusts closed last week. How many more will go? September 16, 2024 Last week, four separate investment trusts handed in their notice, announcing they would be shuttering. Aquila European Renewables, Ecofin US Renewables, Gulf Investment Fund and Keystone Positive Change, all said they would be liquidating, as the number of trusts on the London Stock Exchange continued to dwindle. The number of investment trusts has fallen to [...]
Baillie Gifford US Growth: Investor patience ‘will wear thin’ over underperformance August 22, 2024 The £643m Baillie Gifford US Growth trust is at risk of investor patience wearing thin over its failure to keep up with the strength of US markets, analysts have warned. In the trust’s annual result, it revealed that its underlying assets grew by only 16.2 per cent throughout the year, compared to a 24.8 per [...]
How Bill Ackman’s $25bn Pershing Square IPO collapsed August 1, 2024 Bill Ackman’s plans for the largest ever trust IPO in US history, a $25bn float of closed-end fund Pershing Square US, are no more. The billionaire hedge fund manager admitted defeat late last night, withdrawing his proposal that he hoped would be a competitor to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. While Ackman said Pershing had received [...]