Further news expected soon in latest Scots investment battle
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The name changed again in May of this year when the board of directors led by chair Fiona Wollocombe appointed Glasgow-based Maven Capital Partners as the fund's new manager. Formed in 2009 from a management buyout of the private equity business of Aberdeen Asset Management, Maven has been owned by wealth manager Mattioli Woods since 2021.
Shareholders did not have a chance to vote on the switch to Maven prior to the decision being implemented. Ms Wollocombe said at the time that Maven was selected because it was one of relatively few VCT fund managers with experience of both AIM and private capital investment.
The past few years have been tough for AIM investors as liquidity in smaller companies has dried up, with small-cap stocks viewed as particularly vulnerable to higher inflation and rising interest rates.
To counteract this, the board had proposed that under the new fund manager the VCT should switch to an "AIM Plus" strategy combining investments in the junior market with a pipeline of deals in private companies.
Paul Jourdan said directors of Maven Renovar presented investors with a fait accompli
However, this strategy was rejected by a majority of shareholders voting at the VCT's annual general meeting in June. In addition, Ms Wollocombe and fellow directors Julia Henderson and Brian Scouler failed to be re-elected, as did new board member prospect Neeta Patel.
The remain in place on a caretaker basis until new directors are elected at another general meeting, the date of which could be confirmed next week.
They have claimed that the cost of Amati's fees relative to the company's losses was 'wholly unsustainable' and there was therefore 'no choice' but to change manager. They further say that the defeated resolutions at the AGM would have likely passed but for a "significant portion" of dissenters who were employees, close friends or family of Amati, a claim that Amati has firmly refuted.
A group of investors led by Mr Jourdan has now served a requisition calling for Ms Wollocombe, Mr Scouler, Ms Patel and fellow Maven Renovar VCT director Robert Legget to be replaced by Mr Jourdan, Charles McMicking, Hector Kilpatrick and Kathleen McLeay.
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'To see a former investment manager with such a dismal recent track record now seek to appoint himself and two of his fellow requisitioners to the board is quite extraordinary,' Mr Leggett said earlier this week.
'Taken together, the proposed resolutions themselves are designed to be board-controlling and represent a nil premium takeover by a very small minority of shareholders and are not in the interests of shareholders as a whole.'
Mr Jourdan, however, maintains that the current board erred significantly in failing to give shareholders a vote on the change of manager and investment strategy.
'The difference here is the change of manager was made in order to make a change to the investment policy," he told reporters earlier this week. "The signatories to [our requisition notice] believe that the board should have given shareholders a vote on the change of investment policy before they made the change of manager, rather than presenting a fait accompli.
'The reason why the board were voted out at the AGM was because shareholders would rather make their own decision about buying a VCT with a different strategy. They wish this VCT to remain focused on AIM.'
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