A war of words has broken out between American activist hedge fund Saba and the investment trust it is trying to take control of, after the US investor won a crunch shareholder vote paving the way for it to seize power at the 130-year-old FTSE 250 trust.
Saba Capital launched a fresh broadside against Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust (Ewit), branding its board “out of touch” in the wake of its shareholders rejecting proposals to wind the listed vehicle down last week.
But in an equally fiercely-worded response Ewit chair Jonathan Simpson-Dent branded Saba’s announcement “extraordinary”, arguing it proved the advist investor is not interested in “improving outcomes” but were instead “about control”.
“It is extraordinary that Saba has now chosen to block its own proposal which it claims it is still endorsing,” he said. “This complete contradiction lays bare the fact that Saba cannot be trusted to follow through on its own commitments, even where those commitments were made publicly to shareholders.”
The barbs mark the latest flashipoint of a lengthy activist campaign that Saba, a US investment firm run by pugnacious billionaire Boaz Weinstein, has been waging against the FTSE 250 trust. After winning its first shareholder vote of a bitter years-long battle last week, it accused Ewit top brass of overseeing five years of “unacceptable” performance and failing to understanding shareholders’ priorities.
The victory was the hedge fund’s first of three major votes that shareholders in the trust sided with the New York-based hedge fund, having already failed at two similar showdowns. Saba lost its first poll in early 2025 during its initial assault on Britain’s investment trust sector during which it targeted it targeted no fewer than seven different trusts.
And in January it used its status as Ewit’s largest investor to call a requisitioned general meeting, which the trust’s board also managed to repel before being hit by a third wave of Saba resolutions to be voted on at its upcoming annual general meeting (AGM).
Saba emerges victorious at vital vote
Ewit top brass had been urging investors to support a their tender offer to wind up the trust ahead of the AGM, before Saba – the closed-end fund’s largest shareholder – seized control of the 130-year-old investment vehicle.
But shareholders backed Saba’s alternative proposal, which gave the trust’s investors an option to exit at the full value of their holdings in the coming weeks or after the IPO of Space X, the trust’s flagship holding.
Meanwhile Edinburgh Worldwide’s board offered shareholders the opportunity to realise all their investments bar the Space X portion, which would be returned to them at a future liquidity event such as its eagerly awaited public market debut before the trust would be wound up.
The acrimonious battle for control of the trust has been characterised by a heated war of words, which has seen Saba accuse the board of decision-making that “defied commercial logic”. It has also claimed Ewit covered up its chair’s failings while in a previous role. Ewit denies the claims, but in a statement on Monday, the US hedge fund dialled up the attacks, blasting the board’s track record.
“We thank our fellow shareholders for their support in rejecting the Ewit board’s deeply flawed tender proposal,” Saba said in a statement, adding: “The board’s failure to put forward a well-thought-out tender that the majority of shareholders are willing to support makes it clear that chair Jonathan Simpson-Dent and his fellow directors are completely out of touch with their own shareholders.”
In a narrow vote, 53.8 per cent of the trust’s shareholders rejected Ewit’s proposal, compared with 46.2 per cent who supported it. Saba owns approximately 30 per cent of Edinburgh Worldwide shares.
The result is one of the most significant yet for Weinstein in his campaign to wrest control of seven trusts. Shareholders will now vote on whether to oust the trust’s board and replace them with candidates being proposed by Saba.
But in an update on Monday, Simpson-Dent accused Saba of reneging on a previous commitment to hold a vote on its own tender offer vote ahead of an annual general meeting that will decide the fate of the trust. Failing to do so risked Ewit investors being locked into a trust controlled by a Saba-appointed board without the option to exit at net asset value of their investment, he argued.
“Saba’s actions are not about improving outcomes for all shareholders; they are about control. Saba’s announcement today makes that unequivocally clear,” he said. “If its nominees were appointed, there can be no confidence that any stated intentions would be honoured.
“Shareholders now face a clear choice: protect the company’s independence and long-term strategy, or risk handing control to a party whose actions have demonstrated inconsistency, opportunism and disregard for shareholder clarity.”
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