Investment trust Electra Private Equity has performed well. It does not deserve the ‘activist shakeup’ now being inflicted on it
Electra Private Equity is an investment trust you wish you’d put a few quid into a long time ago. Even if you had bought just before the financial crisis in 2008, you would have doubled your money by now. And if you had the sense to back the trust the following year, at the bottom of the market, you would have enjoyed a ride from £7 to £36 a share.
Electra, in other words, is not obviously in need of a shakeup led by an activist investor. Yet that prospect is now in view. Edward Bramson from Sherborne Partners succeeded in getting himself and a sidekick voted on to Electra’s board on Thursday. He failed a year ago, when he owned 20%. Now, armed with almost 30%, he has managed to crawl over the line.