My take on the Nordics – Gavin Scott
FBNW asked Gavin Scott, responsible for the Nordic region at Edinburgh based Baillie Gifford together with Diana Philip, for his take on the region.
Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh based partnership, has some EUR 2 billion in assets from Nordic clients and has seen most success with its global alpha strategy in the region.
The most notable news at the company is … that we are increasing our investment in unlisted equities as part of listed equity portfolios for institutional investors. Currently, we invest in unlisted equities primarily within some of our closed-ended Investment Trusts in the UK and we took the decision to ask our institutional clients (invested in our most concentrated long-term global growth strategy) whether they would allow us to invest up to 10 per cent of their segregated mandates with us into unlisted equities. A handful wished to do so and we have been implementing this steadily over the last few months at no extra cost to the client.
We find that, because of our reputation as long-term supportive shareholders, many of these private companies are approaching us for supportive funding. We have no pre-determined exit strategy and therefore the clients who have embraced this are amongst our longest standing, most sophisticated investors.
The thing that sets us apart as a fund company is … that we are an unlimited liability private partnership. That makes us perfectly placed to manage our clients’ assets and our own business with a very long-time horizon.
The clearest trend among Nordic investors right now is … the integration of ESG into managers’ investment processes.
Going forward, Nordic investors may want to consider … truly active management of their equity exposure given the risk inherent in passive allocations.
My favourite hotel in the Nordic region is … the Hotel D’Angleterre in Copenhagen.
