Alliance Trust chairman Karin Forseke has said she is "fairly confident" of winning this week's vote on the election of three directors proposed by rebel shareholder Elliott Advisors.
Her admission came as Alliance responded to a recent highly critical forensic report by Institutional Shareholder Services which concluded that "change is warranted at Alliance".
On ISS comparisons showing Alliance has lagged most of its handful of big global growth trust rivals, as opposed to the entire global sector of 30-odd trusts, Ms Forseke said: "We have not under-performed against the whole (of that) group. But we have always compared the trust's performance with the global sector, you could argue it's a poor benchmark but it's the only benchmark we have."
She pointed to a strong run over the past six months and added: "If you look at returns from a risk-adjusted basis you will see we have delivered top quartile over many time periods."
Alliance has also responded to criticism of the £1.34million pay package last year for chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox. ISS claimed her rewards were out of line with other fund groups, but Alliance sources complain that ISS focused only on basic salaries and say the businesses being compared are "entirely different".
The company says: "We're disappointed that the ISS report doesn't represent many of the facts that we provided to them when compiling their research and in particular does not reflect our concerns over the independence of the proposed candidates. There seems to be a lack of consistency in the report, which makes it hard to see which timeframes or comparator groups are being referred to."
ISS also said Alliance's running costs were far less competitive, once the burden of its loss-making subsidiaries is included.
Ms Forseke said its savings business had been profitable two years in a row and on the overall costs she said: "It is an investment in growing both the dividend and the asset value for our shareholders in the long-term."
Analysis p. 22
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