Scottish Mortgage shareholders give green light to greater ‘Unicorn’ exposure

The £3.6 billion Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust has won overwhelming shareholder approval to invest up to a quarter of its assets in private, unlisted companies.

Thursday’s annual general meeting for the trust, which is run by James Anderson and Tom Slater, saw just under 93 per cent of shareholders back a change to the company’s investment policy to enable it to invest up to 25 per cent in rapidly growing technology companies that have not launched on the stock market.

As a result of the Edinburgh meeting, the allowance of unquoted stocks was raised from 15 per cent to increase exposure to high growth tech ‘unicorns’, such as home sharing website Airbnb.

The move comes despite questions over whether ‘unicorns’ can continue to ramp up their $1 billion plus valuations in light of recent stock market turbulence and a global economic slowdown.

However, such firms have become a key plan of the Scottish Mortage’s strategy in recent years and Airbnb, one of 25 unlisted companies in the portfolio at the end of April, this week started a new round of fund raising which it hopes will boost its valuation by 25 per cent to $30 billion.

Scottish Mortgage held 04 per cent of its assets in a £16.2 million stake in the company two months ago.

The trust’s latest annual report shows the managers have continued to add to their unlisted portfolio.

Four new investments included Skyscanner Holdings, the Scottish flight and travel comparison site, in which the fund has a 0.2 per cent or £9.8 million stake; and Transferwise, the low-cost money transfer service, in which SMT has a £13.9 million holding, accounting for 0.4 per cent of assets.