Fears of a eurozone collapse were 'stupid' says fund manager

Business Correspondent/Personal Finance Editor

Friday 25 January 2013

Investor fears a year ago about a meltdown in the eurozone were stupid, investment guru James Anderson said in Edinburgh yesterday.

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SIMON BAIN

Mr Anderson, manager of the £2.4 billion Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, said: "I can't understand how people convinced themselves the eurozone was about to collapse and everybody somehow thinks because we had panic then we are going to have panic again – when in fact it makes it less likely.

"Despite the fact we now have much more information about the world and financial markets, instead of taking advice from different viewpoints all that matters is a bunch of people in London and New York, coloured by intense europhobia and fear of what is going to happen."Tom Slater, Mr Anderson's deputy has just visited some of the trustee's biggest investee companies in the Silicon Valley area of California. He said: "Although technology is the sexy area that gets lots of media attention, there is a shortage of patient capital. "Despite coming from a relatively unfashionable Scottish investment house, I got access to some of the leading people in world technology. That is because these people are thoroughly sick of Wall Street, they don't want to manage their businesses over the next quarter's earnings, they want a shareholder base prepared to look at a long-time horizon."Mr Anderson could not understand how "a dozen of the most highly paid analysts in the world can say Apple is worth $200 billion less than it was yesterday" after results which revealed nothing new. He said a fund manager's job was not to predict where markets were going but to "hope to be in great companies for a really long period of time, where some will be big enough winners to make it all worthwhile".

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Fears of a eurozone collapse were 'stupid' says fund manager

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