Three Baillie Gifford funds riding high in annual global top ten

Fund analysts at Morningstar Direct identified Baillie Gifford’s Pacific Horizon, Shin Nippon and Scottish Mortgage trusts as delivering returns of nearly 50 per cent for investors to place all three on its highest ranking list.

While JPMorgan’s Chinese trust topped the Morningstar Direct list for 2017, returning 52.4 per cent, the Baillie Gifford triumvirate also reflected the Asia-focused theme of trusts that dominated.

The Pacific Horizon trust, managed by Roderick Snell counts most of its investments - such as holdings in Alibaba and Tencent - in China and South Korea. It returned 47.2 per cent last year.

Shin Nippon – which means New Japan – is managed by Praveen Kumar. It returned 45.6 per cent by investing in Japanese smaller companies.

While Scottish Mortgage, managed by James Anderson and Tom Slater and buttressed by investments in tech giants including Amazon, returned 42.3 per cent.

Also representing the Scottish capital on the list was the Independent Investment Trust, driven by strong share performances from the likes of tonic maker Fever-Tree. The Max Ward-managed trust achieved returns of 48.5 per cent for investors in 2017.

Other top performers included Atlantis Japan Growth, India Capital Growth and Vietnam Enterprise, which achieved returns of 42.7 per cent, 42.2 per cent and 42.1 per cent respectively for shareholders.

Meanwhile, Caledonian Trust, the Edinburgh-based property investment holding and development company, has announced a pre-tax profit of £1.04 million in the year to end-June, up from £105,000 in the previous year.

The group said: “Edinburgh, despite the loss of banking jobs and in spite of political uncertainties, is the UK ‘hot house’ for growth.”