The chair of the embattled investment firm Alliance Trust, Karin Forseke, has said she will step down from her role at the start of next year, the latest high-profile change at the company amid reforms prompted by pressure from activist shareholders.
The Dundee-based investment trust, one of the oldest in the UK, announced last month it would implement “significant changes” to deliver better performance, partly by creating a wholly independent board.
Katherine Garrett-Cox, chief executive of the trust, said at the beginning of October she was resigning her position on the trust’s board to focus on tackling the firm’s underperformance, in the aftermath of the bitter spat with its top shareholder Elliott Advisors.
Forseke said she was stepping down on 1 January. A non-executive director, Gregor Stewart, will take on the role of interim chair until a new chair is chosen. “We are making good progress implementing changes announced in October to accelerate our long-term strategy and we expect the new governance structure to be in place in early 2016,” Forseke said in a statement.
The company said it is “reorganising its governance structure to create a wholly independent board and Karin believes that, as this process nears completion, it is the appropriate time for her to step down”.
Alastair Kerr, senior independent director, will also stand down from the board on 1 January, earlier than planned. Karl Sternberg will take on his role and lead the search for a new external candidate to chair the board.
In April, the investment firm reached an 11th-hour compromise with Elliott Advisors, which had been pushing for change at the company. Alliance Trust said it was appointing to the board two of the three independent directors nominated by the US hedge fund.
