Alliance Witan, the outcome of this year’s record investment trust merger between multi-manager rivals Alliance Trust (ATST ) and Witan (WTAN ), looks assured of a place in the FTSE 100 after holders of only just over 9% of Witan shares opted to withdraw their money.

Results from Witan’s scheme election show 90.7%, or 538.5m, of shares agreed to roll over into Alliance Trust with just 9.3%, or 55.4m, taking the cash option.

This is less than the 17.5% maximum set by Witan’s board when recommending the merger to shareholders in June. It means the trust will shrink by about £147m but at the current share prices leaves it with a market value of £1.45bn. When added to Alliance’s £3.38bn, that gives a total capitalisation of £4.8bn, sufficient to push it into the lower ranks of the FTSE 100 in 87th place, where it should attract buying from tracker funds.

If the increased profile as a ‘blue chip’ FTSE stock sees Alliance Witan shares trade at ‘par’, rather than the 6% discount to net asset value (NAV) at which Alliance currently stands, then its market value would rise to about £5.1bn. That would move it just ahead of rival F&C (FCIT) in 78th place, Refinitiv data suggest.

Witan shareholders earlier gave their overwhelming backing to the merger, with just 0.7% of shares voting against the combination and the liquidation of their company.

Alliance Witan will follow the existing approach of Alliance, investing in 10-12 external fund managers running portfolios of 10-20 of their best ideas. The two trusts currently have two fund managers in common, Andy Headley of Veritas and GQG’s Brian Kersmanc.

Deutsche Numis analyst Ewan Lovett-Turner said the ‘realignment’ of the portfolio ‘should be relatively easy to achieve’.

Witan has also confirmed there would be no fire-sale of its specialist holdings given recent discounts but it has recently reduced its stake in Schroder Real Estate (SREI ) from 6.2% to 1.1%, but still holds 5.7% in private equity fund Apax Global Alpha (APAX ) .

‘It is positive to see there was strong support for the merger,’said Lovett-Turner. ‘Turnout was relatively low (at 17%-18% of Witan and 25%-26% for Alliance), although we believe this reflects the uncontroversial nature of the deal and the typical low turnout of retail investors.’

The merger was triggered by the retirement of Witan chief executive Andrew Bell, with 50 fund managers putting themselves forward in a competitive ‘beauty parade’.

Since Willis Towers Watson took over the Alliance mandate in 2017, the fund has delivered NAV total returns of 101.8%, or 9.8% a year, versus 102.6%, or 9.9% annualised, for the MSCI All Country World index.