Scottish Mortgage is easily the most closely followed investment trust in Britain. Someone who put money in the fund 20 years ago would now be sitting on a total return of just under 1,600 per cent, thanks to its early bets on companies such as Amazon, Tesla and Nvidia.
These moves are often attributed to the fund’s former manager James Anderson. But Tom Slater, who has helped manage the fund since 2009 and took over the leadership when Anderson retired in 2022, worked on these calls too.
Softly-spoken, a mathematician and computer scientist by training, Slater has never worked as an investor outside Baillie Gifford, the asset manager home to Scottish Mortgage, having joined as a graduate trainee in 2000.
When we meet for lunch I am gently mocked for failing to bring an umbrella up to Edinburgh, where the 115-year-old fund house resides. Sunny skies have given way to flash showers and I arrive at The Magnum, a restaurant tucked away on Albany Street, slightly wet.
Slater orders…
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