The City should be rattled by Saba's cunning campaign to unseat investment trust boards

The cleverness of Weinstein's campaign is that it has a chance of succeeding - perhaps not at all seven trusts, but maybe at a few

- Nils Pratley

Saba Capital's proposals are "self-serving and destructive", says the chair of one of seven London-listed investment trusts in the firing line of the New York hedge fund. Another is "appalled by Saba's action and conduct". A third says Saba is pursuing "a backdoor attempt to seize control of the trust". A fourth thinks Saba is following an "unknown and unproven" strategy and, similarly, is trying "take control of your company for its own economic benefit".

When opinion is so uniform, it is tempting to take the opposite side and suspect a case of vested City interests feeling threatened. After all, the popular criticism of investment trusts - companies that invest in other companies - is that there are too many of them and that their boards are complacent even when share prices trade at frustratingly wide discounts to the value of the underlying assets.

If Boaz Weinstein, Saba's founder, thinks he can "quickly deliver substantial liquidity and long-term returns to all shareholders", why not let him try? Weinstein may drone on, irrelevantly, about his skill in counting cards at blackjack, but he has also committed £1.5bn by buying stakes of between 19% and 29% in the seven trusts.