📝 Lessons on activism: Never underestimate your target. ALWAYS ENGAGE. Observe closely, never judge appearances, dig deep. You’ll avoid embarrassment, and long-term emotional and financial hurt.
Herald Investment Management Limited and HERALD INVESTMENT TRUST PLC: ✊I get you now. Attending the 2025 AGM, hearing from Katie Potts and her team, and weeks of research and observing have helped me understand the magic behind Herald’s ‘parish commissioner’ externalities.
The boring surface protects a secret shared by legions of loyal stakeholders for over 30 years. Shareholders who worship patience have been blessed by steady long-term gains: NAV total return of 2,611.1% and a share price total return of 2,800.7% since inception of HIT in 1994. A proven knack for finding winners early on marks HIT’s hymn sheets. Rounding off the service is a commitment to ESG and engagement. The trust engages actively with and votes at their investee companies’ AGMs.
All this has a wider impact too - on 🇬🇧 business. UK entrepreneurs, many of whom are ‘national treasures’ today may not be where they are had it not been for HIT and its reluctant heroine. So, count hundreds, if not thousands of (likely deep-pocketed) entrepreneurs also congregating at the church of KP.
It takes a team to win, but a team is only as good as its leader. Katie Potts has made me scratch my head so much that I worry about a bald spot. Aunt Bessie vibes (now in her 60s), no social media footprint, no fangled PR (must frustrate her very capable PR advisers just a little) and me, Chat GPT, Grok and DeepSeek all stumped by the lack of any mention of her personal story - where she comes from, where she lives, her family, hobbies or pets. How important is it anyway if she is a dog or a cat person? I say dog btw 🐾🐶🤔
⚔️ Brienne of Tarth heart in Bessie vestment. Several heavyweights have said give her a damehood. To this I say, ‘Arise Lady Katherine, a knight of the 7 kingdoms’.
So where does Herald go from here? Saba Capital Management, L.P. is a now a key stakeholder of the UK investment trusts with their £3.2bn investment totalling more than 1% of the entire industry.🗽Boaz Weinstein is brilliant in his own way, and no doubt just as quirky and nearly as clever as Ms Potts (he’s younger - give him time). RESPECT is key. Surely ENGAGEMENT and constructivism is the best way forward for all. Collaboration will deliver higher returns than division in my POV.
Always room for constructive challenge to advance humanity forward. The next generation of young entrepreneurs and investors are ready to be inspired by bad*sses! Let’s do it 💪Still ample of glass ceilings left to smash 💥
Thank you for this valuable lesson.
‼️ NOT financial advice.
#uk #investmenttrust #fundmanager #shareholders #AGM #shareholderactivism
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