Baillie Gifford appoints deputy for trust

BAILLIE Gif f o r d has appointed adeputymanager to its Monks global trust as it steps up the marketing of its investment trusts.

Tom Walsh will work alongside Gerald Smith, Baillie Gifford’s chief investment officer, on the £1 billion trust where performance has faltered over the past two years relative to the global growth sector.

It follows the appointment in 2009 of Tom Slater as deputy manager of the £2.4bn Scottish Mortgage trust run by Ja mes Anderson.

Mr Walsh has been promoted from Baillie Gifford’s UK equity team. A law and economics graduate of Edinburgh, he qualified as an accountant with Deloitte & Touche and worked as an analyst for Merrill Lynch and a fund manager at Fidelity before joining the Edinburgh partnership in 2009.

James Budden, director of marketing and distribution at Baillie Gifford, said the deputy manager’s role had been trialled successfully at Scottish Mortgage, and included “putting up ideas for inclusion in the portfolio – it widens the gene pool”.

It also provided extra capacity for communication with potential shareholders, at a time of opportunity from the new regime in financial advice.

“We are very keen that investment trusts should benefit from the exit of commission and the levelling of the playing field,” Mr Budden said. “It is up to us to get out there and talk to intermediaries, and this appointment helps us to do that.”

Although the long-term performance of Monks is respectable, it is in the bottom quartile over one and three years (Scottish Mortgage is top quartile) according to Trustnet.