THE MANAGER of two Baillie Gifford emerging markets funds has moved into second position in The Herald’s league table of Scottish fund managers after gaining over 500 places in financial information group Citywire’s listing of nearly 4,000 global managers.

Mike Gush, who manages the Edinburgh fund house’s Emerging Markets Growth Fund and Greater China Fund, was ranked in position 470 in the latest global list, placing him second in the Scottish league table after Amati’s Paul Jourdan, David Stevenson and Douglas Lawson. The trio collectively manage the Amati UK Smaller Companies Fund.

The table is based on risk-adjusted performance over the three years to the end of July.

In the latest annual report for the Emerging Markets Fund, which covers the year to the end of April, Mr Gush said that the portfolio, which is 32 per cent invested in China, had benefited from a “recent bounce in absolute performance” that came “after such a long period of lacklustre performance from emerging markets equities”.

He added that the fund, which also has large positions in India, Taiwan and South Korea, had benefited from being able to pick from a wider selection of stocks than had traditionally been the case.

“While our investment universe in the last couple of decades has largely been limited to a motley collection of undifferentiated banks, telecoms companies and resource producers, emerging market investors now have access to a range of companies that appear capable of competing with and perhaps even superseding what the rest of the world has to offer,” he said.

“Many of these are in the internet and technology sector, where our favourite companies continue to grow at dizzying rates.”

Fast-growing Chinese technology company Tencent, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Chinese e-commerce business are among the fund’s largest holdings.

Tencent and Alibaba are also among the largest holdings in the Greater China Fund, with Mr Gush noting that they “continue to grow at dizzying rates as consumption growth in China remains robust”.

In the fund’s annual report from earlier this year Mr Gush said that investments in information technology and consumer discretionary stocks had been of particular benefit to performance.

“Notable positive contributors included our holdings in the information technology sector, particularly in semiconductor hardware,” he said.

“ASM Pacific, a global leader in semiconductor equipment and a supplier to the likes of TSMC, performed strongly, as did Hon Hai, Sunny Optical and Largan, all of which are geared into the digitalisation of the world economy.

“Our holdings in the consumer discretionary sector also contributed positively to performance.

“Geely, a leading Chinese car company, and Fuyao Glass, a domestic auto parts supplier, both had excellent operational results.”

Mr Gush, who is AA-rated by Citywire, co-manages the Emergiung Markets Fund with Richard Sneller and the Greater China Fund with Sophie Earnshaw, neither of whom were listed in the latest Citywire rankings.

Elsewhere in the table, fellow Baillie Gifford manager Matthew Brett had the most-improved performance month on month, climbing 874 places in the overall Citywire table to rank at number 20 in the Scottish chart. Mr Brett runs two Japanese funds.

His colleagues Will Sutcliffe and Gary Robinson, who manage the Baillie Gifford Emerging Markets Leading Companies and Baillie Gifford American funds respectively, also had a strong showing, climbing 771 and 745 places to rank in 15th and 19th place respectively.

The Amati managers who topped the table, all of whom are AAA-rated by Citywire, also managed to improve their ranking in the global table month on month.

Having been in 78th position for the three years to the end of June, they moved up to position 68 at the end of July.

There was only one female manager in the Scottish table in July, with Kames Capital’s AA-rated Elaine Morgan climbing 371 places in the global table to rank in position 12.

She manages Kames’ UK Smaller Companies fund.