MOST banks remain "complex, greedy and unrepentant", the managers of the £3 billion Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust have declared.
James Anderson and Tom Slater offer this view in their latest managers' report, published yesterday.
The Baillie Gifford fund managers highlight their continuing enthusiasm for investment opportunities in China, and their view that the power of technological change is underestimated.
However, they declare: "Whilst technology and China move on at pace, there is little evidence that our financial system is other than stuck. The sad majority of banks remain complex, greedy and unrepentant. Fund managers still appear reluctant to exert their full influence over the managements in question.
"Hedge funds in aggregate appear ever more impatient... All too often major companies appear effectively without committed owners."
Mr Slater and Mr Anderson observe that commentators have picked up on the "popular hedge-fund mantra" that China faces a housing bubble and debt crisis.
But they add: "Whilst we would endorse the economic and political case for optimism over Chinese prospects, the argument has been advanced much more powerfully by the remarkable growth of the Chinese internet companies. Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu have begun to command global respect for their innovation, popular appeal and sheer scale as well as their stock-market success."
The pair say they are excited by investment opportunities, and fascinated by changes in the transforming global economy.
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