Saba Capital, the activist hedge fund led by Boaz Weinstein, has won a dramatic victory in its long-running campaign against the board of Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust.

Shareholders in Edinburgh Worldwide voted Thursday for Saba Capital’s plan to oust EWIT chair Jonathan Simpson-Dent — and five other board members — and to install three Saba-backed board nominees.

The result gives Weinstein’s firm control of Baillie Gifford-run EWIT, which is focused on cutting-edge public and private technology companies and which offers rare public-market access to SpaceX.

SpaceX, whose private market valuation has soared ahead of an imminent IPO, is EWIT’s largest holding, at about 20% of its portfolio.

It has been a key flashpoint in the protracted boardroom battle, with Weinstein criticizing the board’s decision to sell down a portion of the investment last year.

EWIT generated a staggering 947% return on SpaceX since 2018, on what was then a “speculative” tech bet, Simpson-Dent told CNBC in December.

Weinstein also blasted EWIT’s large discount to net asset value, since narrowed, describing it in a November letter as “unprecedented value destruction.”

Saba now plans to put itself forward as the next manager of EWIT, keeping the fund listed in London but overhauling its strategy.

The trust would pivot to a portfolio largely made up of UK-listed investment trusts with a global remit, while targeting a single-digit discount to NAV through an active share buyback program, Saba said in an open letter to shareholders on Tuesday.

The victory, which was set to be announced at EWIT’s annual general meeting later Thursday after the board conceded it did not have the numbers to defeat Saba’s motion, reflects a decisive shift in the trust’s shareholder base.

Retail and private wealth investors have steadily offloaded their positions throughout the wrangle, making way for U.S. institutional funds to move in. Four U.S. institutional funds, which made up 40% of the share base, voted against the board, according to EWIT.

The transatlantic tussle has seen each side accuse the other of misleading investors, following two earlier unsuccessful attempts by Weinstein to overhaul the board.

Ahead of the vote to oust him, chair Simpson-Dent said EWIT’s individual retail and private wealth shareholders had been “ground down” by “repeated attacks” from the U.S. hedge fund manager, and “replaced by institutions seeking to capture the upside potential in EWIT’s substantial SpaceX exposure.”

“This is a disappointing day for our long-standing shareholders who are set to lose exposure to this exciting mandate focused on next-generation technology, seemingly in favour of Saba’s plan to invest in other U.K. investment trusts,” Simpson-Dent said in a statement ahead of Thursday’s result.

“This should represent a wake-up call for the investment trust sector and its regulators.”

But Saba — which…

Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust, a Baillie Gifford-run technology-focused fund, is calling on shareholders to throw out a plan by Boaz Weinstein’s activist investment fund Saba Capital to overhaul its board of directors.

The EWIT board said on Wednesday it would “strongly urge” shareholders to reject a plan by the U.S. hedge fund — which holds a 30% stake in the trust — to remove the incumbent board and appoint three directors in their place.

In an update on Wednesday, the trust’s chair, Jonathan Simpson-Dent, said Saba was “an aggressive U.S. hedge fund” which wants to “seize control for its own commercial advantage, at the expense of other shareholders.”

Simpson-Dent said the trust has made “strong progress” over the past 12 months.

Saba Capital said the sweeping board-level changes were needed to reverse what it sees as “unprecedented value destruction” at the trust over the past five years. In a recent letter to shareholders, the firm said its three proposed directors — Gabi Gliksberg, Michael Joseph and Jassen Trenkow — could “deliver the performance our shareholders rightfully expect.”

As the largest shareholder, Saba has secured a General Meeting — expected to take place early next year — where it will ask shareholders to vote on its resolutions for board replacements.

“We urge Saba to explain to EWIT shareholders its intentions beyond replacing the Board, to allow shareholders to make an informed choice in January rather than face considerable uncertainty should it succeed,” Simpson-Dent said.

He highlighted the trust’s NAV total return of 16.2%, outperforming the 6% achieved by its benchmark, the S&P Global Small Cap Index. He also said a share buyback programme had contributed to an average discount of 5.3% over the past 12 months, “significantly narrower” than its peer group average of 17.9%.

Saba’s plan follows a previous attempt to replace the EWIT board in February, which investors rejected. Since then, Weinstein’s firm has increased its stake to 30%, allowing it to block a proposed merger between EWIT and another Baillie Gifford fund, the US Growth Trust, earlier this month.

Boaz Weinstein is calling for the removal of the entire board of a tech-focused fund managed by Baillie Gifford, in a bid to reverse what the activist investor sees as “unprecedented” value destruction.

In a letter to the Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust’s board on Thursday, Weinstein — whose activist investment firm Saba Capital owns around 30% of shares in the trust — said the board has “objectively and categorically failed” to deliver the performance expected by shareholders.

EWIT’s portfolio comprises a global mix of smaller and emerging public and private companies focused on tech innovation and transformation, that target “significant disruptive growth potential,” according to the London-listed Baillie Gifford’s website.

Its holdings include Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which makes up 8.4% of its portfolio.

Weinstein said EWIT’s net asset value is down 30.8% over the past five years, while its share price return has fallen 35%, having “massively underperformed” its self-selected benchmark, the FTSE All-Share Index, which is up 71.4% over the same period.

That means the company’s NAV return and share price performance ultimately lag the benchmark by more than 100% over the five-year period, Saba noted in the letter.

“The magnitude of this value destruction is unprecedented among peer U.K. equity investment trusts over this period,” Weinstein wrote.

The trust’s total assets stood at £847.15 million ($1.1 billion) as of Oct. 31.

Now the high-profile activist investor is calling for a general meeting to appoint a new board composed solely of “qualified, independent directors… committed to delivering long-term value for all shareholders.”

“We remain profoundly frustrated by the board’s prolonged inertia,” Weinstein wrote in the letter on Thursday. “We do not have faith in the current Board’s ability to implement the necessary strategic changes.”

The move follows an earlier attempt by Saba last year to shake up the EWI trust’s board, a bid which ultimately failed to win investor support.

Weinstein — whose New York-based $6 billion hedge fund trades credit relative value opportunities — has built a number of positions across the U.K. investment trust space lately.

Outlining two new bets at the annual Sohn London investment conference last week, he said there is “a storm brewing” in the U.K. investment trust sector where discounts have widened sharply.

EWIT is expected to issue a statement later on Thursday. Baillie Gifford declined to comment on the matter.