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Scottish judge agrees to change trust's deed

Governance | Tania Mason | 19 Aug 2008

A Scottish charitable trust has won a court case to alter its trust deed to widen its remit and enable it to fund a greater range of causes.

The RS Macdonald Charitable Trust, which was established in 1978 by a relation of one of the founders of the Glenmorangie whisky empire, applied to the Court of Session (Scotland’s supreme civil court) for permission to update its terms and conditions.

The trust had become increasingly hamstrung by its original deed, in that only certain charities were eligible to receive grants. Many applications for funding had had to be rejected.

The trustees decided to try to broaden the criteria after just four out of 45 applications received in a nine-month period were eligible.

The judge who considered the case, Lord Drummond Young, said the trust’s current assets of more than £50m were far more than the founder could have contemplated when he established the charity 30 years ago.

The late Roderick Stewart Macdonald set up the trust with £50,000 worth of shares, but when he died in 1995 his personal shareholding, which he bequeathed to the trust, was worth £17m. When Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy bought the distiller (pictured) in 2004, the shares were worth nearly three times that.

Macdonald had named six charities that could be supported by the trust when he founded it, though certain others could apply if they met particular criteria.

But as well as extending the criteria, Lord Drummond also ruled that grants could not exceed £40,000. This would force the trust to ensure it sought out more beneficiaries instead of merely giving bigger grants.

And he declined the trustees’ application to be allowed to give grants to charities operating outside Scotland.

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