A LEADING Edinburgh-based fund manager has warned the “anti- immigrant policy” arising from the Brexit vote will have a calamitous effect on the UK’s corporate sector, while describing the implications of a Donald Trump victory in next week’s US presidential election as “very, very dangerous”.

James Anderson, who runs the £4.7 billion Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust with Tom Slater, said the prospect of an end to freedom of movement across the European single market following Brexit will deny UK businesses the talent they need to succeed.

And he emphasised that the uncertainty which has followed the vote to leave the EU was hampering business investment and enterprise.

Asked whether the investment world needed clarity on the UK Government’s Brexit strategy, Mr Anderson said: “Absolutely. From the investment point of view, from the creation of companies point of view, I think it is deferring decisions, and the anti-immigrant policy is, or effective policy … is possibly the worst thing you can do for the long-term future of the British corporate sector.”

Mr Anderson’s remarks came as the Scottish Mortgage saw a 25 per cent increase in net asset value (NAV) and price per share in the six months to September 30. That compared with an 18 per cent rise in its benchmark FTSE All World Index over the period.

The trust, whose investments are overwhelmingly held in assets in North America and Asia, traced these gains to the fall in the value of pound since the Brexit vote in June, which it noted had boosted the sterling value of overseas assets.

Scottish Mortgage said six months is too short a period over which to judge its investment approach, which should be assessed over a longer term. It noted that during the last five years the total return for NAV was 165 per cent and 183 per cent for the share price.

The trust’s biggest investment is in technology giant Amazon, in which it holds 10.8 per cent of is assets, with nearly half (48.7 per cent) of its assets invested in North America.

Tuesday’s presidential election, alongside political pressure on the pharmaceutical sector across the Atlantic, weighed on investor sentiment last night, as the FTSE 100 slumped to its biggest weekly fall since January.

Mr Anderson declared that the long-term implications of a Trump victory are “potentially disastrous”.

“I don’t think it will ultimately change the management, the vision, [or] the prospects of the type of company we invest in,” he said. “But I do think it makes the future of America as a country, as a currency, as a ruling entity, much more challenging.”

He added: “In the long run I think it is very, very dangerous.

“I trust the companies in which we invest to do a better job of opposing it and coping with the ramifications than almost every other set of companies because I think it is potentially disastrous.”

Asked whether he has detected any change in investor behaviour as a result of the political upheaval seen in the UK and across the Atlantic, Mr Anderson replied: “I think there is a grave danger that an average saver working hard to build a pension for the long run gets completely the wrong side of this, because as we saw at Brexit there is this immediate panic out of markets which I don’t think helped anybody.

“But I think if one is trying to think of the next 10 years it is impossible to exclude politics of the type we are seeing now – the populism, the racism, the sexism. The opposition to education and experts I think is terrifying.”

Mr Anderson said the sea change which has rocked politics in the UK and the US underlines the importance for investment trusts to have a global balance to their investment portfolios. Scottish Mortgage had 21.8 per cent of its assets invested in Asia at September 30, with 19.7 per cent in firms in China. Of the 28.6 per cent of assets it had invested in Europe, only 4.4 per cent were in UK companies.

The trust, which has investments in 67 companies, continues to have a bias to what could broadly be described as technology enterprises, including stakes in Alibaba, electric car maker Tesla, Facebook and Google parent Alphabet. He also expressed disappointment over the £24 billion takeover of UK firm Arm Holdings by SoftBank of Japan, stating the deal had done “major damage to Britain’s chances of producing a technology heavyweight”.