By Caitlin McCabe
Activist rabble-rouser Boaz Weinstein has finally gotten his big British victory.
The American hedge-fund manager won a key shareholder vote Thursday to replace the board of a U.K. investment trust prized for its sizable stake in SpaceX.
The result puts Weinstein's firm, Saba Capital Management, in line to take over as manager of Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust, a nearly $1.2 billion fund with a roughly $240 million stake in Elon Musk's rocket company. That role would allow Saba to collect fees and decide what happens to the fund's assets.
Saba's victory will likely push aside Baillie Gifford, the Scottish investment giant that has long managed the trust. The move caps a nearly 17-month fight over the fund, including two failed attempts to wrest control.
Weinstein launched a broader campaign to shake up Britain's 150-year-old investment-trust industry in late 2024, initially attacking seven funds over the steep discounts at which their shares traded relative to the value of their holdings. His playbook: Oust the trusts' boards, change their strategies and make money by closing their discounts.
The New York hedge-fund manager's efforts were initially firmly rejected by London's old financial guard. Industry shareholders -- including those at Edinburgh Worldwide -- turned out in droves to vote his proposals down.
But Weinstein, a chess ace known for taking down a JPMorgan Chase trader known as the "London Whale," kept circling the sector. Last year he racked up a string of quieter victories, with several of the British trusts in which he'd built stakes ultimately moving to return cash to shareholders or change strategy.
On Thursday, at the third time of asking, he managed to win backing from Edinburgh Worldwide's shareholders to oust the fund's longtime board and replace them with his nominees. The new board now has the option to appoint Saba as the trust's manager, which analysts view as likely.
The trust's longtime chair attributed Weinstein's victory to his relentless campaigning.
"Retail and private wealth shareholders have been ground down by Saba's repeated attacks," Jonathan Simpson-Dent said Thursday ahead of the final tally of the vote. He will now relinquish his role.
Simpson-Dent said that many of the trust's investors had already exited the trust, "replaced by institutions seeking to capture the upside potential in [the trust's] substantial SpaceX exposure."
Four U.S. investment funds -- holding more than 40% of the trust's shares combined -- voted against the board, he said. That included Saba, the trust's largest shareholder.
"This should represent a wake-up call for the investment trust sector and its regulators," Simpson-Dent added.
In a note to shareholders earlier this month, Saba said that -- if selected as the trust's next manager -- it would shift the fund's strategy to invest in other U.K.-listed investment trusts.
The trust's new strategy wouldn't be one "of suffering discounts, as [Edinburgh Worldwide] shareholders have suffered under Baillie Gifford," Saba wrote last week. "Instead, it is a strategy built around profiting from them."
Saba noted that such a change to the company's investment policy would require approval from the U.K.'s financial watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority.
Saba hasn't set out its intentions for the trust's stake in SpaceX. About 20% of Edinburgh Worldwide is invested in the rocket company, which is barreling toward what is expected to be one of the largest initial public offerings of all time.
Shavar Halberstadt, a research analyst at Winterflood Securities who studies investment trusts, said he expects Saba will hold the SpaceX shares through the IPO, and then sell them and use the remaining cash to execute its strategy.
"Saba's persistence has clearly paid off," he said of Thursday's vote.
Write to Caitlin McCabe at caitlin.mccabe@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 30, 2026 13:29 ET (17:29 GMT)
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