Baillie Gifford have raised £173m at launch for the Baillie Gifford American Growth trust.
The trust is to be managed by Gary Robinson, who currently runs the £1.1bn Baillie Gifford American fund, which is the absolute top performer in the IA North American sector over one, three and five years to 21 March.
Tom Slater, who jointly runs the £7bn Scottish Mortgage investment trust, is the head of US equities at Baillie Gifford, and is named as a co-fund manager on the open ended fund but not on the new investment trust.
The new trust will own both quoted and unquoted companies.
There will be between 30 and 50 companies in the fund, with not more than half of the capital invested in unquoted companies at any one time.
Andrew Telfer, joint senior partner at Baillie Gifford, said: "To raise £173m for a long-only equity trust is an excellent achievement and an endorsement of our ability to find exceptional growth companies in both listed and unlisted space in the US.
"The trust will seek to grow its assets from here through issuance at a premium to net asset value in the way that most of the other trusts we manage have done over the past 12 months."
david.thorpe@ft.com
