Baillie Gifford are an Edinburgh-based asset management firm. Within the UK and abroad, they are probably best known as managers of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (aka SMT; see LSE listing here), the largest of two investment trusts found on the FTSE 100 index. As a firm, they are predominantly investors in companies with long term growth prospects, and have a keen eye for identifying companies who employ new technologies to upend traditional industries and sectors (though this does not mean they are exclusively ‘tech’ investors). They were, until recently (c. 2021), the second largest shareholders of Tesla after Elon Musk himself, and had a spectacular 2020 both in terms of their funds’ valuations and also in terms of increased AuM (assets under management). What 2021 brings remains to be seen.
Date written: 12/03/2021
