‘We still believe in Facebook and Google’

Investors in big technology stocks such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google have reaped the rewards in recent years, with each of the industry giants enjoying strong growth. Yet in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which Facebook users had personal information shared without their knowledge, there are fears of a backlash against the major tech firms. Many funds have significant investments in the sector and any tech downturn is likely to have a big impact on returns.

Are these fears overstated? William Davies, manager of the Threadneedle Global Select fund, which manages about £1.3bn, told Telegraph Money why he still backed the internet giants to deliver for investors.

The fund is for those who want exposure to large quoted companies around the world. We are a global fund but are heavily invested in America, with more than half of our assets there.

We look for companies that we believe are high quality and have high returns. We want individual companies that are growing faster than average, in terms of both revenue and profit.

A substantial amount of the fund is invested in technology, because that is where you find a lot of growing companies with strong cash flows.

We think some of the companies that already dominate the sector will continue to grow.

Look at Alphabet [Google’s parent company]: it continues to perform strongly. We also invest in online retailers such as Alibaba, which has a dominant market share in China. We believe it will also continue to succeed.

Even if growth slows, these

CV: William Davies

William Davies s has been with Threadneedle (now Columbia a Threadneedle) ) since its launch h in 1994. He is head of global equities, with responsibility firms continue to return capital to shareholders through share buy-backs and dividends.

One of the criticisms of tech companies is that they are very good at one thing but when they diversify they don’t repeat that success. But look at Amazon: as an online retailer it has a dominant market share in many countries, but now it has also developed a global web service and cloud storage business which has been incredibly successful. They have taken a strong business and augmented it with another successful business.

Technology will remain a core part of the portfolio and we will remain overweight on technology.

Many technology stocks still offer good value, Threadneedle’s William Davies tells Adam Williams