A “significant risk” of shareholders of a £1 billion Scottish company “sleepwalking” into a change they “did not seek or desire”.

That is the warning sounded by stockbroker Panmure Liberum ahead of a crunch vote at an annual general meeting of the Scottish company today.

US hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein’s Saba Capital Management is seeking to install three individuals it has nominated to the board of Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust, of which it owns about 29%. It has tabled resolutions to appoint Jason Chen, James Waterlow and Thomas McGlade at today’s AGM of the investment trust.

Baillie Gifford chief executive Tim Campbell told The Herald in an exclusive interview late last month that it would be “incredibly sad” if Saba succeeds in its move on this major Scottish-based investment trust, which had total assets of around £1.1bn at September 30.

He declared Baillie Gifford US Growth, managed from Edinburgh by the investment house he heads, has done an “amazing job” for shareholders.

The holdings of Baillie Gifford US Growth, which is a corporate broking client of Panmure Liberum, include Elon Musk’s SpaceX, artificial intelligence giant Anthropic and payments platform group Stripe.

Panmure Liberum rightly highlights the importance to shareholder democracy of investors turning out to vote, in the context of Saba’s large stake in Baillie Gifford US Growth.

And it contemplates what would be likely to happen in the event that Saba gets its way at the AGM.

Referring to Baillie Gifford US Growth as “USA”, Panmure Liberum says in a note of which research analyst Callum Stokeld is lead author: “USA shareholders are being asked once again to affirm their support for the strategy at the forthcoming AGM, after the trust's largest shareholder proposed three new directors. They have already resoundingly done so on two previous occasions in the past 18 months, but given voting rules and the [circa] 29% to 30% voting stake of the proposer of the requisitioned resolutions, the........

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