Alliance Trust continues board overhaul as marketing expert is appointed

Dundee-based Alliance Trust has announced the appointment of marketing consultant and former financial journalist Clare Dobie to its board.

Ms Dobie will take up her role on the unsettled board of the wealth manager with immediate effect as the business attempts to get to grips with what has been a fraught period of board governance.

The appointment also sees Trust chairman Lord Smith of Kelvin deliver on his pledge at the firm’s recent AGM to make the issue of gender diversity at the highest level of the business one he was “determined to address at the earliest opportunity”.

Ms Dobie has been running her own marketing consultancy for the last 10 years, and previously was group head of marketing at GAM, as well as head of marketing Barclays Global Investors.

She is currently a non-executive director of the Aberdeen New Thai Investment Trust, F&C Capital and Income Investment Trust, and the Schroder UK Mid Cap fund.

Prior to her work in the asset management industry Dobie was a financial journalist for 15 years, with her last role as City editor for The Independent.

Lord Smith of Kelvin said: “ skills and expertise in the investment trust sector and her early background in financial journalism provide an ideal complement to an already strong board.”

The latest appointment follows the play by activist shareholder Elliot Investors to enforce three new independent directors onto the board last year.

In September it succeeded in forcing the board to accept two of the new hires following a public and expensive stand-off with the administration of former chief executive Katherine Garratt-Cox who resigned in February.