Baillie Gifford has revealed senior partner Charles Plowden is to retire from the business as it announces a shake up of its investment team.
Plowden, who co-manages the £3.6bn Baillie Gifford Global Alpha Growth and the £1.4bn Baillie Gifford International funds and is lead manager on the £1.9bn Monks Investment Trust, will step back from the business on 31 April 2021, the Edinburgh manager confirmed in an update seen by Portfolio Adviser.
Plowden has been with the business 38 years, becoming a senior partner in 2006.
Following his departure, fellow global alpha team manager Malcolm MacColl will become joint-senior partner alongside Andrew Telfer.
Additionally US equity manager Helen Xiong will join the global alpha team at the end of this month, becoming a “decision maker” effective 1 May 2021. She will sit alongside existing global alpha managers MacColl and Spencer Adair who have worked with Plowden on the Global Alpha Growth fund since launch in 2005.
Both the Baillie Gifford Global Alpha Growth and International funds are first quartile in the IA Global sector over one, three and five years.
The Monks Investment Trust has also consistently been in the top half of performers in the IT Global sector, retuning 116% since Plowden took the helm in March 2015, double the sector’s 58%.
James Anderson steps back from Long Term Global Growth team
Xiong’s space on the US equity team will be filled by Dave Bujnowski. Based in Baillie Gifford’s New York office, he has been with the fund group since 2018, joining from Coburn Ventures, a consulting and investment company, which he co-founded in 2005.
US equity head Tom Slater and portfolio managers Gary Robinson and Kirsty Gibson remain on the team.
Additionally Baillie Gifford said James Anderson would be taking a step back from the Long Term Global Growth team, leaving Mark Urquhart as the sole head. Anderson and Urquhart were two of the team’s original founders in 2003.
Baillie Gifford said that in recent years Anderson, who co-manages Baillie Gifford’s £9.3bn Scottish Mortgage Investment trust, had been taking a step back from the day to day management of the LTGG portfolios to focus on research “the task he enjoys the most”.
He will continue to co-manage Scottish Mortgage and the International Concentrated Growth Strategy and solely manage the Vanguard International Growth fund.
Urquhart and Slater will make decisions for the LTGG portfolios with input from Anderson and Shanghai-based John MacDougall.
