The shareholder group which supported Elliott Advisers in its battle with Alliance Trust has reopened the campaign.
Sharesoc has launched an Alliance Trust Shareholder Action Group and called for its board to consider radical changes including outsourcing the investment management and selling off the subsidiaries.
The group claims to speak for small UK shareholders and was vocal in its support for Elliott's bid to land three new directors onto the Alliance board, which resulted in two being accepted without a shareholder vote at the annual meeting.
Sharesoc's deputy chairman Roger Lawson asked Alliance chairman Karin Forseke at the meeting on April 29 whether she would be resigning over the trust's climbdown.
Now the group has called on the trust's beefed-up board to consider a seven-pointplan.
It says the investment trust board could be reorganised into a "totally non-executive independent entity" , as applies with most trusts.
It suggests "a reorientation away from expansion and a re-focussing of management's attention onto the performance of the investment trust".
Dundee-based Alliance Trust Savings, it says, could be sold to a larger competitor as it "lacks scale". The investment arm, London-based Alliance Trust Investments, should be "divested or wound down to eliminate a loss-making activity", says Sharesoc, in a similar move to offload the risks borne by shareholders.
It calls for a "radical pruning of costs", claiming that the "multiplicity of offices in Dundee, Edinburgh and London" must surely add to overheads, and a "specific policy and plan" to tackle the trust's high discount.
It concludes: "If costs and performance continue to be inferior to third party alternatives, the trust should cease to be self-managed, and a management contract (should be) awarded to an organisation with an excellent track record and a risk profile similar to that traditionally associated with Alliance Trust."
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