Beyond the benchmark: Baillie Gifford CEO on why being different pays off

“If you’re trying to find the very best growth businesses on the planet – a benchmark isn’t a sensible place to start.” Baillie Gifford’s chief executive Tim Campbell explains the advantages of our style of active investing, the importance of long-termism and how AI fits into our process. Background: In April, Tim Campbell became Baillie Gifford’s chief executive and one of its managing partners. Earlier in his career, he was an investment manager before switching to Client Services, where he led our Emerging Markets Clients Team. In this podcast, he explores how our investment teams adopted a conviction-led approach that centres on each company's merits, regardless of its weighting in benchmark stock indices. He describes what we mean by long-termism and the importance of having the right incentives in place. And he explains why being “out of step” with some market trends helps us serve both society and our clients’ interests. The second half of the show focuses on changes afoot, ranging from further private company investments – including a recent holding in AI lab Anthropic – to our own adoption of artificial intelligence technologies and an exploration of new ways to access our strategies. Resources: Baillie Gifford: Actual investors Disruption Week Drayton and Mackenzie One Useful Thing: Ethan Mollick’s blog Our history Private company investments Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking The Friction Project Companies mentioned include: Anthropic Amazon MercadoLibre NVIDIA Runway AI Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 02:10 From music in the Middle East to investing in Edinburgh 03:15 Making the move to Client Services 05:00 Rewriting the investment playbook 06:30 Client hunger for benchmark agnosticism 07:40 Active versus passive investing 10:20 A mutual understanding with clients 11:55 Drawdowns and hold discipline 14:30 Defining long-termism 17:00 Private company investments 19:30 Investing in Anthropic and Runway AI 24:55 ‘The mission doesn’t change’ 27:35 Book choice

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