Baillie Gifford has delivered some tremendous returns to investors across a wide range of funds over a long period of time, and the man at the heart of it all has been Charles Plowden, joint senior partner and chief of Baillie Gifford’s investment staff from 2006 to 2021.
In this interview, Charles tells Mary McDougall how the Scottish firm has grown to become the dominant force it is today, how individual funds sit within the firm’s wider context and shares his concerns about the rapid growth of passive investing. He also explains why he doesn’t think the types of stocks Baillie Gifford invests in are overvalued.
Charles has worked across a number of investment teams over 38 years at Baillie Gifford, most recently managing the Monks Investment Trust and Baillie Gifford Global Alpha Growth Fund.
This interview was conducted in his last week at the firm, ahead of his retirement on 30 April 2021.
