Ann: 2023 Annual General Meeting - Chairman's Address, page-4

I was also listening. The chairman at times labelled these sorts of questions as "rude" and as you say couldn't provide the decency to answer them. Whether the board obtained external independent advice about the buyback approach is a pretty simple yes or no answer that could have been given. Arrogant in my book to refuse to answer that.

As far as being rude goes, I would have thought running a LIC for 6 years at a loss to investors more fits that description. Particularly when the investment team , manager, turnover strategy , dividend intentions, fx management, is all now completely different to what was sold at the time in the prospectus.

I tried to ask online about who these investors are that gave the board "positive feedback" on the new dividend policy. Surely it's easy to tell us who they are, if they preferred this versus an open end restructure or not? If they declare it all received positive feedback I assume they have polled a significant amount of shareholders? Of course the very brief online question was phrased differently to what was submitted.