@not2hot, You are absolutely correct in that either a change of...

@not2hot, You are absolutely correct in that either a change of investment strategy or a change of investment manager with a different investment philosophy would IMHO have saved the company.
JB stuck rigidly to his opinion that the sky was going to fall in, and positioned the fund for that eventuality.
When the sky did fall in, he was woefully unprepared and did very little to get the fund into recovery mode to make good gains when (as you say) a number of other LICs did so. What can you e pe t when shorts almost exactly equal longs ? LSF is a great turnaround story and I am with WIC and SEC that have made significant gains since. WIC added 22% to its NTA in Nov alone ! The most significant factor that affected the SP of ALF was the threat of corporate action to depose the board, and which appears to be leading to the wind up and the return of funds.
When I spoke to Geoff Wilson, he commented that once the two activists had initiated the proposal that they join the board, the cat was out of the bag (for almost anyone) to take on the fund and make a significant improvement. As you point out, performance had been sh**, for near on 4 years; or as you put it nicely “ struggled to achieve any returns at all”.
I would confidently expect the return of our money, but I wouldn’t expect any sort of corporate action for a superior proposal.