Sarah Whitley and Matthew Brett, the Japanese equity team at Baillie Gifford, have made it a hat-trick of successive top spots in The Herald's monthly table of best-performing fund managers in Scotland.

Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, in its last appearance in the rankings before being swallowed by Aberdeen this month, sees its presence in the table cut from seven managers to three.

The top-rated equity stars at houses with a substantial presence in Scotland have seen their relative positions, on three-year performance to the end of April, weaken in the league table of managers across 35 countries ranked by financial publisher Citywire. The number of Scottish managers who qualify for a rating slips from 114 in February and 99 in March to 93 in April, despite a rise in the overall rated manager count from 1601 to 1650.

Only six Scottish managers make the top 200, compared with nine in March, and there is also a reshuffle among the chasing pack behind the Baillie Gifford duo, also top of the pile for five months in a row during 2013, whose overall Citywire ranking slips from 99th (and 69th in March) to 111th.

Jacob de Tusch-Lec, manager of the global income and monthly distribution funds at Artemis,is ranked 117th and moves into the top three, followed by First State's Asia Pacific and emerging markets managers David Gait (133rd) and Jonathan Asante (158th).

Ousted from A's top five are Tim Steer at Artemis (down from 111th to 405th) and Audrey Ryan at Kames (from 119th to 289th).

Artemis gains two new ratings in the shape of Laurent Millet and Mark Page, who run the European Opportunities fund and came in at 1258th.

Baillie Gifford continue out in front with an unchanged 22 showings, while Standard Life is up one to 15 with the arrival of Colette Conboy, AA-rated on the basis of previous track record and ranked 418th and SL's second highest manager.

Artemis and Franklin Templeton have 11 managers each while Ignis, set to disappear into Standard Life Investments, has four (down from five).

Aberdeen Asset Management makes five appearances, up from four thanks to a new entry for Joanne Irvine, global and emerging markets smaller companies specialist, who has Aberdeen's top ranking at 584th. But the disappearing SWIP sees its strength cut from seven to three, with Jonny Russell, Craig Bonthron, Stephen Corr and Andrew Perham all dropping out as performance fell below the Citywire rating bar.

Kames Capital also loses four managers from the March table- Iain Wells, Douglas Scott, Euan McNeil and Peter Shaw - to halve its presence to four.

SVM moves from two to three with the inclusion of Hugh Cuthbert, manager of its European SRI funds, though its top performer Margaret Lawson slips from 145th to 488th.