THE £5 billion Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust has highlighted its “very small” exposure to the UK economy, as Brexit looms, and signalled continuing confidence in global giants such as Amazon despite US President Donald Trump’s “unpredictable approach”.
The UK’s largest conventional investment trust, managed by James Anderson and Tom Slater of Baillie Gifford, set out its position yesterday after unveiling a 38.1 per cent total return on net asset value for the year to March 31. Its benchmark, the FTSE All-World index in sterling terms, recorded a total return of 33.1 per cent.
Catharine Flood, client contact for Scottish Mortgage, said: “There are some things make less difference. Brexit is perhaps more important for the British economy. We have a relatively low weighting to British companies. The ones we do hold are very international, globally-focused companies. The exposure to the UK domestic economy is very small.”
She underlined Scottish Mortgage’s investment philosophy of being a “global best ideas trust”.
Ms Flood added: “Unfortunately, for a long time now, we have struggled to find those leaders in the UK.”
She noted ARM Holdings had been one company that had attracted Scottish Mortgage, although this semiconductor and software design group was ultimately acquired by SoftBank of Japan.
Ms Flood signalled Scottish Mortgage’s belief that Donald Trump had the potential to have more impact on the global stage than Brexit. She revealed the investment trust is, following November’s presidential election result, so far “sanguine” about positions it has built up in “global network” businesses such as Amazon.
The US-based online retail giant was Scottish Mortgage’s biggest holding at March 31. Scottish Mortgage’s £510 million stake in Amazon accounted for 9.5 per cent of the trust’s total assets.
Ms Flood said: “Obviously, as President of the United States, Donald Trump has a significant ability to influence not just his own domestic economy but the global economy.”
She added: “We remain very keen on the prospects from here for those large global network businesses…They are looking to give their clients and customers what they want, and do so at an ever-cheaper price.”
Outgoing Scottish Mortgage chairman John Scott said: “The world can and does change, and sometimes this happens at a faster rate and is more significant than at others. It would be easy to focus on a number of political risks, from President Trump’s unpredictable approach to policy-making, to questions over North Korea’s true intentions, to the escalation of the troubles in the Middle East, but the task of this board is to consider the outlook in the context of the portfolio of Scottish Mortgage. In doing so, it is important to focus on what will actually make a significant difference to the long-run prospects of the companies in which the managers invest.”
Tesla Motors was Scottish Mortgage’s second-biggest holding at March 31, with the trust having a £367m stake in the electric car specialist. Among other big holdings are biotechnology equipment company Illumina, internet services group Tencent Holdings, online retailer Alibaba Group, social networking site Facebook, and online search engine Baidu. Inditex, owner of clothing retailer Zara, also figures among Scottish Mortgage’s largest holdings.
Scottish Mortgage unveiled plans for non-executive director Fiona McBain, former chief executive of mutual financial institution Scottish Friendly, to become its next chairman at its June 29 annual meeting.
Mr Anderson said: “We are very grateful for John Scott’s guidance as chairman. We have been most fortunate to work for, and with, a board that has helped us enormously and we have every confidence that this will continue under Fiona McBain’s leadership.”
While noting the trust’s “very healthy” performance over the year to March 31, Mr Scott noted the benefit of the pound’s devaluation, which has made overseas investments worth more in sterling terms.
He highlighted Scottish Mortgage’s total return on net asset value of 146.6 per cent over the five years to March 31, way ahead of a corresponding 97.3 per cent for its benchmark.Over the 10 years to end-March, the trust’s total return of 236.3 per cent was ahead of 148.7 per cent for the FTSE All-World Index.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here