New York activist Boaz Weinstein turned up the heat on seven investment trusts by saying he aimed to rehabilitate a broken industry that has not been able to grow.

In an 80-minute webinar he repeated his accusation that the fund managers, particularly at at Baillie Gifford and Janus Henderson, were underperforming.

Mr Weinstein wants shareholders to vote at a number of general meetings to remove the boards of the trusts and replace them with new directors.

He said: “We are here to not just buy your trusts, we are here to buy billions more and rehabilitate this broken set of trusts and what is – in some ways – a broken industry that hasn’t been able to grow.

“My prediction is in the coming three months, many of the trusts that Saba holds will announce shareholder friendly actions that will make you additional hundreds of millions of pounds that you would not otherwise have made because they want to head us off at the pass.”

Hinting that he may target more trusts, he added: “The entire UK closed-end fund space in general will see smaller discounts, especially if we win and we have this fire power to buy up UK trusts.”

Commenting on the boards, he said: “All of these trusts have board members that are part of this ecosystem of greed, taking fees away from the pensioners for what? They are supposed to work for you, the shareholders, and they themselves are sitting on other trusts trading at similar discounts.”

Mr Weinstein’s actions have drawn a fierce defence from the trusts’ boards and some shareholders who have accused him of using misleading and short-term data, and operating an opportunistic and self-serving strategy to grab assets under management and earn fees on them.

The targeted trusts include four constituents of the FTSE 250: Herald Investment Trust, Edinburgh Worldwide, Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust and European Smaller Companies Trust. The other three are Henderson Opportunities Trust, Keystone Positive Change Investment Trust and CQS Natural Resources Growth & Income. Saba holds stakes of between 19% and 29% in all seven.

On Baillie Gifford, which manages three of the targeted trusts, Mr Weinsten said it was responsible for “the most abysmal failures in the … investment trust space”.

The first meeting takes place at noon on 22 January when investors in Herald IT will vote on the proposals.

Other shareholder meetings:

USGT: 3 February 2025 at Noon

KPC: 3 February 2025 at Noon

HOT: 4 February 2025 at 10am

CYN: 4 February 2025 at 11am

ESCT: 5 February 2025 at 12:30pm