I think the whole thing is a joke.

 

There are 2 director's seats up for grabs in the election.  1 director is elected by the preferred shareholders.  There are about a half dozen large investment firms that own all of EMO's preferreds (essentially they're debt) and those firms depend on EMO's manager to keep selling them the preferreds, so I think that's a shoe-in.  In any event, the preferreds have no incentive to improve performance or raise the common dividend - they just get the preferred dividend in any case.

 

The second director is elected by a vote of the common + preferred shareholders.  I didn't check to see the weighting - that is, how much of the vote the preferreds control.  Saba owns 15% of EMO's common, but EMO has adopted a plan that caps any common shareholder's vote at 10%.  So that's 10% in favor of Saba, diluted in some fashion by the preferred vote.  (Aside - I think the 10% cap is based strictly on the percentage of common units outstanding, but again I didn't check.)  EMO's proxy shows that Saba is the only 5%+ shareholder, so it's not like Saba could get together with some other large shareholders and win the vote.

 

So I can't see Saba winning the seat, and even if it did, it's only 1 out of many seats.  EMO has a staggered board, with 1/3 of the directors up for election each year.

 

We'll see what happens.