Lloyds in climb down after row over trust vote: Mail praised for exposing 'deplorable' move
Lloyds in climb down after row over trust vote: Mail praised for exposing 'deplorable' move
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Stakes: Three Lloyds-owned platforms – Scottish Widows, Embark and Stock Trader – were set to block investors from voting on Saba's proposals. Lloyds caved in to pressure last night and will now give shareholders in seven London-listed investment trusts a say on plans to oust their boards.
The Mail on Sunday this weekend revealed Scottish Widows and two other platforms owned by the bank were not allowing investors to vote on a shake-up of the trusts proposed by Wall Street financier Boaz Weinstein. His hedge fund, Saba Capital, is proposing to replace directors at seven investment trusts with its own nominees, saying leaders have ‘failed shareholders’ and made poor decisions.
Industry experts branded Lloyds’ conduct ‘utter madness’ and praised the Mail for exposing the issue. ‘It’s deplorable that some platforms are denying investment trust shareholders their right to vote,’ said Richard Stone, head of industry body the Association of Investment Companies (AIC).
‘This behaviour by platforms deprives shareholders of their rights and hands activists like Saba an unfair advantage over thousands of ordinary shareholders. We’d like to thank the Mail for highlighting this poor treatment of customers and we’ll be doing everything we can to stop this.’.
Power grab: Wall Street financier Boaz Weinstein is proposing to replace directors at seven investment trusts with its own nominees through his hedge fund, Saba Capital. But in a major U-turn last night after the scandal was exposed by the Mail, a spokesman for Lloyds said that it now had a ‘workaround’ for the problem ‘in place so that those customers can let us know and we’ll vote as per their direction’.
