InvestmentsAug 19 2019

Baillie Gifford assets hit £207bn

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Baillie Gifford assets hit £207bn

Edinburgh based investment partnership Baillie Gifford had assets under management of £207bn at the end of June 2019, it has disclosed.

As a company owned by its partners, Baillie Gifford does not have to publish consolidated group accounts so getting a clear picture of the financials is difficult.

However, the company told FTAdviser that its total assets under management reached £207bn at the end of June 2019, with 15 per cent of this coming from the retail market, which includes financial advisers, and the remainder coming from the company’s institutional business. 

The portion coming from retail has risen from about 10 per cent to 15 per cent in recent years.

Baillie Gifford is owned by 48 partners, and had 1,187 employees at the end of June. 

The partnership owns four main subsidiary companies around the world with about 60 per cent of its clients - both retail and institutional - being based outside of the UK, that is by number of clients rather than proportion of the total assets of the business.  

One of the four, Baillie Gifford and Co Limited, is registered at Companies House in London and manages the UK assets for predominantly UK-based clients.

The division had assets of £52.1bn at the end of March. This comprised £36.3bn in open-ended funds, £13.7bn in investment trusts and £2.1bn in Canadian Pooled Funds. 

Baillie Gifford's investment trust business was boosted by the winning of the Baillie Gifford UK Growth investment trust mandate from Schroders in June 2018, while the Scottish Mortgage investment trust, which Baillie Gifford was created to manage in the 19th century, is now the largest trust in the UK market with assets of £8.6bn. 

The UK division recently reported its annual results for the year to the end of March 2019, which showed the division had revenues of £203m on its £52.1bn assets under management.

That equates to an annual management charge on the assets of about 0.4 per cent.

Based on this it is estimated the entire group had revenues of more than £800m in the year but the company would not confirm this.

The Baillie Gifford and Co division reported a profit of £12m for the year to the end of March 2019, up from £8m in the previous year. 

The company has never been part of any merger or acquisition, with the asset growth coming from inflows.

But earlier this year it announced its intention to open an office in China.

A representative said at the time: “Baillie Gifford is undertaking the necessary steps to open an office in Shanghai with the formation of a new wholly foreign-owned enterprise, Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Shanghai) Limited. 

"The new office will enable us to broaden our investment research base in China, deepen our long-standing relationships with many of China's most exciting growth companies and forge further links with the local academic community.

"In the medium term, the Shanghai office will also enable us to explore more opportunities in the Chinese domestic and foreign asset management sector."

david.thorpe@ft.com