Alliance Trust: we've spent £48m on our own shares since February

Alliance Trust, the investment trust that faced down a major shareholder revolt at its recent annual meeting, today revealed that it has spent almost £48 million buying back its own shares since February.

Hedge fund Laxey Partners had called on the trust, which is led by Katherine Garrett-Cox, to introduce a formal mechanism to buy in shares whenever the discount to net asset value was above 10%. Laxey lost the vote but still saw more than third of shareholders side with it.

Garrett-Cox has responded to the attack by substantially increasing the trust's share buyback. In the first quarter from February to the end of April the trust bought and cancelled 5.4 million shares at a cost of £19.4 million. This month it has spent £48.3 million buying in another 12.7 million shares. This has helped improve the discount from 17.1% to 15.3% but that is still below the investment trust sector average of 8%.

Alliance said its net asset value rose by 2.9% in the first quarter to 381.5p a share. The trust said that the search for a new chairman to replace Lesley Knox, who is standing down after ten years in the role, was underway.