Alliance chief Garrett-Cox refuses to be 'bullied' into appointing City heavyweights to the board

Katherine Garrett-Cox opposes appointments at Elliott Advisors mooted by a hedge fund

Katherine Garrett-Cox opposes appointments at Elliott Advisors mooted by a hedge fund (EPA)

Katherine Garrett-Cox, the chief executive of Alliance Trust, is preparing for battle with Elliott Advisors, the hedge fund hoping to shake up the Dundee-based investment firm.

She told the Sunday Times that she would not be “bullied into something just because someone stands up and shouts at us”.

Katherine the Great vs the activist investors

Elliott Advisors, which has spent five years building up a 12 per cent stake in Alliance Trust, hopes to appoint three City heavyweights to Alliance’s board, it says, to improve performance and cut costs at one of Britain’s oldest investment companies.

The three are Anthony Brooke, former BZW and Warburg investment banker, Peter Chambers, former chief executive of Legal & General Investment Management and Framlington, and Rory Macnamara, a former corporate financier at Morgan Grenfell and Lehman Brothers.

Ms Garrett-Cox said the appointments would be “one step towards something that our shareholders are very unlikely to want”.

She added that the three proposed appointments “just can’t be regarded as fully independent and we pride ourselves on having a very robust, thorough and open recruitment process”.

She is believed to have the support of The Beano publisher DC Thomson, which owns 6 per cent of Alliance.