After 2,240% Run, Tesla Visionary Leaves U.K. Fund Bleeding Money

"(Bloomberg) -- .Awkward timing, to say the least. .and later Baillie Gifford’s flagship product .But the tech stock meltdown has left the firm bleeding assets this year, losing a staggering 100 billion pounds ($122 billion) by the end of June. What was already a tall task for the next generation of the firm’s stock-pickers — convincing investors they can follow in Anderson's footsteps — has added a new hurdle: making the case that they should..The recent market rally will have helped, but changing course doesn’t appear to be an option. More than a dozen former and current employees and clients, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity in recent weeks, depict a firm that fell under the spell of Anderson’s success. A company partner who held no formal management position for years ended up driving Baillie Gifford’s entire approach to markets..“We are not sitting, looking into a crystal ball trying to predict what’s going to happen,” Slater said. “Wealth doesn’t come from predicting stuff but from a small number of exceptional companies.”.marketing the Anderson mystique and attracting ordinary investors and major pension funds across the US and Britain.a partner and portfolio manager for another Baillie Gifford team, initially drove the Tesla investment in the early 2010s, but Anderson got most of the credit — and the media attention).. reported a record 3.16 trillion yen ($23.4 billion) net loss on Aug. 8 after its Vision Fund, the world’s largest technology fund, got hammered. .Indeed, other big name investors came unstuck after stellar returns. Bill Miller, the manager whose unprecedented record of beating the Standards & Poor’s 500 Index made him an investing legend, couldn’t relive his past glories after a sharp turn in his fortunes..More dramatic was Neil Woodford’s fall from grace in the UK. The star money manager mesmerized investors for years with his performance. But following a poor run, clients started pulling their cash, leading to the suspension of his flagship fund in 2019..Baillie Gifford is far more than one fund and has other strategies that don’t pursue the kind of returns that made Anderson a magnet for retail clients, who would flock to hear him speak at investor forums. But, over the time, the firm tilted toward his investing philosophy..Insiders say that with Anderson gone there’s more room for flexibility, but Baillie Gifford is in so deep it might be hard to go back. .Before July’s bounce, the ride has mostly gone in one direction: down. Baillie Gifford is a top-three holder of Moderna (down 22% year to Aug. 16); Shopify Inc. (down 68%); and Spotify Technology SA (down 41%). It’s also a major holder of Illumina Inc. (down 33%) and Peloton Interactive Inc. (down 58%), among others..And while Anderson was the first to invest in private companies at Baillie Gifford, even more conservative investment trusts run by the firm have exposure to the asset class, albeit at much lower levels..by former senior partner Charles Plowden in 2005 .like Moderna and Tesla. The firm says any similarities between portfolios are unintentional and that each team does its own research..the investment philosophy Anderson helped to build.More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com.©2022 Bloomberg L.P."

After 2,240% Run, Tesla Visionary Leaves U.K. Fund Bleeding Money

Some inside the company saw him as a mad genius. Now, Baillie Gifford is trying to adapt to life after James Anderson.

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After 2,240% Run, Tesla Visionary Leaves U.K. Fund Bleeding Money

Some inside the company saw him as a mad genius. Now, Baillie Gifford is trying to adapt to life after James Anderson.

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