By Ian McConnell
BAILLIE Gifford partner James Anderson has flagged the investment house’s view that the “underlying purpose of providing equity capital at scale is to try to assist in mitigating, and hopefully solving, the most serious problems the world faces”.
Mr Anderson made his remarks as Baillie Gifford declared on Wednesday that it remains a “strong supporter” of electric vehicle and battery storage systems pioneer Tesla, following an “enforced” reduction of its holding in the Californian company.
He declared: “Without Tesla’s efforts the possibility of averting climate disaster would have been significantly reduced.”
Baillie Gifford said on Wednesday: “Baillie Gifford’s shareholding in Tesla has dropped below five per cent at the end of August, therefore it is required to disclose this information to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It submitted this filing earlier today.”
Explaining the development in relation to its stake in Tesla, which is run by entrepreneur Elon Musk, Mr Anderson said: “The substantial increase in Tesla’s share price means that we needed to reduce our holding in order to reflect concentration guidelines which restrict the weight of a single stock in clients’ portfolios. However, we intend to remain significant shareholders for many years ahead. We remain very optimistic about the future of the company. Tesla no longer faces any difficulty in raising capital at scale from outside sources but should there be serious setbacks in the share price we would welcome the opportunity to once again increase our shareholding.”
He added: “We are privileged to have been Tesla’s largest external shareholder over a critical period for the development of the company. We are immensely grateful for the extraordinary efforts and achievements of Tesla in driving forward a transportation and energy revolution in the face of persistent scepticism and often downright hostility.”
In an interview with The Herald in June, Mr Anderson, co-manager of the £10 billion-plus Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, highlighted Tesla as the biggest contributor overall to the trust’s performance in the year to March.
Mr Anderson said on Wednesday “In our view the underlying purpose of providing equity capital at scale is to try to assist in mitigating, and hopefully solving, the most serious problems the world faces.
“For sure, we and our clients are extremely happy with the progress of the share price but we see this as but a reflection of the ultimate objective.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel