Maxwell's salvage.. .
HUMOURLESS would be the cat which could not laugh at the spectacle of Philip Hill Investment Trust being rescued by Robert Maxwell. There has been no such feat of self-sacrificing salvage for months — not, that is, since Tiny Rowland rescued Eddie Shah. A shareholders' revolution had promised to unseat the board and change the investment policy. Instead the board recommends the bid from the British Printing and Communications Corpora- tion. Holders now face a familiar dilemma. They bought the shares to get a spread of managed investment (why else buy an investment trust?). They can now choose between taking cash, paying Capital Gains Tax, and reinvesting what is left in another spread of managed investment — or taking Mr Maxwell's shares. The rescuer's reward is about £330 million, for Mr Maxwell will sell the trust's investments. The last trust which Mr Maxwell rescued was Bishops- gate. He took it over in the summer of 1984. a year later, the index of investment trust shares had risen by 19 per cent, and BPCC's shares, with a pleasing symmetry, had fallen by 19 per cent.
Previous page
