Capital Gearing Trust (CGT ) is close to resuming share buybacks in full after Northern Ireland’s High Court yesterday approved the reclassification of £1.1bn in its share premium account into distributable reserves.

The Belfast-domiciled investment trust was forced to reduce share buybacks in October after technical and administrative delays held up the cancellation of its share premium account. At the time the wealth preservation fund, lead managed by Peter Spiller, had just £23.8m of distributable reserves, having bought back an estimated £140m of its shares last year under its zero-discount policy.

The £1.2bn company said the re-categorisation had been submitted with the Registrar of Companies and it would make a further announcement in due course.

Capital Gearing shares fell to a 5% discount when the delay was revealed but this has since narrowed to 2.8%. Suspending the zero discount policy added to a difficult 2023 which saw its shares fall 3% compared to a 1% rise in net asset value.

In November, the trust’s chair Jean Matterson appeared to target company secretary and administrator Juniper Partners when she said she was ‘extremely frustrated’ and criticised a ‘series of errors and omissions’ by third parties and said the board was seeking compensation.