ASA Gold & Precious Metals Ltd Proxy Filing

TL;DR

ASA Gold & Precious Metals Ltd filed proxy materials including a webinar Q&A transcript.

AI Summary

ASA Gold & Precious Metals Ltd filed a Definitive Additional Materials proxy statement on April 11, 2024. The filing includes a transcript of a Q&A session from an April 10, 2024 webinar featuring Axel Merk and Darshan. The purpose of the webinar and the specific topics discussed are not detailed in this excerpt.

Why It Matters

This filing provides additional materials related to ASA Gold & Precious Metals Ltd's proxy statement, potentially offering insights into management discussions or shareholder communications.

Risk Assessment

Risk Level: low — The filing is a routine proxy statement update and does not contain information that suggests immediate or significant risk.

Key Players & Entities

• ASA Gold & Precious Metals Ltd (company) — Registrant
• Axel Merk (person) — Webinar participant
• Darshan (person) — Webinar participant
• April 11, 2024 (date) — Filing date
• April 10, 2024 (date) — Webinar date

FAQ

Key Financial Figures

• $100,000 — , the fund does have insurance. There's $100,000 retainer on that insurance that the fun
• $155,000 — end of March has saved investors about $155,000. We added another five basis points of

Filing Documents

• asa-defa14a_041024.htm (DEFA14A) — 42KB
• 0001999371-24-004701.txt ( ) — 43KB

From the Filing

DEFINITIVE PROXY SOLICITING MATERIALS UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549 SCHEDULE 14A PROXY STATEMENT PURSUANT TO SECTION 14(a) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 Filed by the Registrant Filed by a Party other than the Registrant Check the appropriate box: Preliminary Proxy Statement Confidential, for Use of the Commission Only (as permitted by Rule 14a-6(e)(2)) Definitive Proxy Statement Definitive Additional Materials Soliciting Material Pursuant to §240.14a-12 ASA Gold and Precious Metals Limited (Name of Person(s) Filing Proxy Statement, if other than the Registrant) Payment of Filing Fee (Check the appropriate box): No fee required. Fee computed on table in exhibit required by Item 25(b) per Exchange Act Rules 14a–6(i)(1) and 0–11. Fee paid previously with preliminary materials. April 10, 2024 Webinar Q&A Axel Merk: I'll pass it on to Darshan and we definitely want to get into some questions about what's happening at ASA right now and maybe Darshan, if you want to tee one of those questions off as the first question. Darshan Bhavsar: Yes, thank you Axel. Yeah, so Axel, can you shed some light about the current situation with Saba? Axel Merk: Sure. Well, that's a general question, so I'll be glad to take that. So as many of you, and maybe most of you are aware, we have currently a contested proxy, meaning that we have a shareholder meeting on April 26th where the board has asked all the shareholders to vote with management to keep this current board in place as well as to support two of the initiatives. And the context is that Saba Capital Management and known activist investor decided to initiate a proxy fight is rather unfortunate because we asked them numerous times to engage with us and have specific questions and demands, and they did not relay those to the board before they said this board needs to be replaced. The short of it is that we believe that most of our investors really like what ASA is doing. The mandate of ASA is to invest in gold and precious metals. The mandate is not that we necessarily invest in this junior mining space. We have chosen to invest in this junior mining space because it allows ASA to be differentiated and we believe that if we were quote, unquote index hugging, then you don't need the added cost overhead of what a closed-end fund brings with it. The closed-end fund and ASA in particular is more expensive to manage. Now, of course, it doesn't mean you couldn't have other strategies, but the reason I mentioned that is that Saba in particular believes in quote, unquote closing the discount. Now on the one hand, discounts are a fact of life in the close-end fund space. On the other hand, of course there is a potential upside, at least in theory, if one were to close a discount and closing the discount means that instead of trading below net asset value, that these shares would trade at par, at net asset value. In the past, the sort of tools that are being used in the industry to try to address the discount, one thing they have in common is that they usually only work short term because over time this discount tends to come back. There are players in the industry that they, all right, that doesn't matter because if the fund gets too small to be sustainable, you just shut it down. What's different about ASA is it was established in 1958 with a very particular mission to invest in the precious metals fund. Because it was started in 1958, that long ago, it has a few unique features. One of them is that it was founded actually in South Africa and re-incorporated in Bermuda in 2004. And that means that some of the traditional tools, the most obvious one would be to convert it to an open-end structure is almost certainly not going to work. We think the process with the SEC would be outrageously expensive and likely not succeed. And then one other thing that's done to temporarily reduce the discount is often a very significant tender offer. The fund actually did that more than a decade ago, or actually in 2009 I believe it was initiated. And at the time a third of the assets were shrunk, so to speak. A third of the shares were tendered back and there was also share buy back. The fund shrunk from, I don't have the exact numbers in front of you but me, but about 850 plus million to at the low in 2018. It was 175 million and part of that was the tender offer, but then the protracted bear market afterwards, which is of course always a possibility in the space. A key difference back then was that the portfolio was very liquid and it was much larger, so it was at least possible to do. Now the fund is smaller. We were able to grow when we took over management, the fund was around just under 200 million and we have grown it to 380 million and that's nice. So that gives us some breathing space, but of course we always have to worry that there might be a bear market down the

View Full Filing

View this DEFA14A filing on SEC EDGAR