Alliance Trust has appointed two new directors to its board including Chris Samuel, who led Ignis Asset Management successfully for six years until its takeover by Standard Life 15 months ago.
Mr Samuel joins as a non-executive along with Karl Sternberg, a co-founder of Oxford Investment Partners, as the City awaits the outcome of a strategic review triggered by pressure from New York hedge fund Elliott Advisors.
That pressure intensified two months ago when chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox, who at a stormy annual meeting in April had appeared to stake her future on a recovery in Alliance’s investment performance, unveiled disappointing first-half results.
The £2.7billion trust has now slipped back into the bottom half of its global trust peer group, according to latest figures by Lipper for ILP Moneyfacts. Ranked eighteenth out of 32 trusts over three years – an achievement which triggered incentive payments to Alliance executives last year – Alliance is now occupying fifteenth place on its one-year performance to September 1, and nineteenth place for the most recent six months.
Elliott meanwhile has increased its stake to 14 per cent, up two per cent from its holding earlier in the year when it forced Alliance to concede the appointment of two nominated directors, Anthony Brooke and Rory McNamara. Only 24 hours before the annual meeting in Dundee, the trust’s board agreed to accept two of three nominations on which Elliott was about to force a shareholder vote, and call a 12-month truce.
Alliance said both the latest appointments had been made “following consultation with our largest shareholders”.
The new directors will replace two existing non-executives, including the senior independent director Alastair Kerr. The former retail executive only joined the board in 2012 as part of a shake-up, soon after the arrival of chairman Karin Forseke, and he was chairman of the much-scrutinised remuneration committee.
Also departing is John Hylands, who stepped down as finance director at Standard Life in 2007, and joined the Alliance board a year later.
Chris Samuel was chief executive at Ignis from 2009 when he succeeded Gavin Stewart, until its sale. He was previously chief operating officer at Gartmore and Hill Samuel and spent 10 years with US investment bank Prudential-Bache, in senior finance roles in London, Toronto, Tokyo and New York. He was educated at Oxford and started his career with KPMG in 1980. He is currently a non-executive Director of J P Morgan Japanese Investment Trust and the London Community Foundation
On his departure, Phoenix Group said that Ignis under Mr Samuel had “successfully implemented a new strategy to transform the business” resulting in “much improved business performance including stronger investment performance, with some 85per cent of AUM (assets under management) outperforming benchmarks and peer groups in 2013”, as well as an expansion of its distribution channels, strengthening sales year-on-year, and profits rising from £34m in 2009 to £49m in 2013.
Clive Bannister, leader of Phoenix Group which sold Ignis, said: “Chris was the architect of a new strategy.....he has successfully overseen the resulting plans and, in so doing, has transformed Ignis.”
Mr Sternberg, at Oxford Investment Partners from 2006 to 2013, was previously global head of equities and chief investment officer for Europe and Asia Pacific, at Deutsche Asset Management.
Alliance said: “The appointments of Chris and Karl mean that, effective from the 2016 AGM, five of the nine serving board directors will have been appointed since 2014.”
Ms Forseke said: “I am delighted that Chris and Karl are joining the Board as they both bring extensive knowledge of the industry from their careers in the investment and asset management sector. Investment is at the heart of Alliance Trust and is the key to our future success and I believe their skills and expertise are the ideal complement to an already strong board.”
She added: “We remain fully committed to delivering measures that will address the feedback we have received from our shareholders.”
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