Mathieu Caquineau: The results of our pan-European Awards for Investing Excellence 2020 are in, and this year, we're announcing the winners across our websites. For the Outstanding Investment House Award our European analysts have taken a hard look at firms that put investors front and center. Candidates for this award must have a Morningstar parent rating of high, which indicate both a strong investment culture and great stewardship. After a thorough debate between our analysts, we have voted and elected Baillie Gifford as the winner of the award this year. The firm has strong roots in the U.K., but it has expanded its presence in Europe in recent years without changing its good culture. The firm has been a great ally for investors putting their long-term interest at the heart of its strategy.
Today, I'm very pleased to be joined by Gavin Scott who is a partner at Baillie Gifford. First of all, congratulations, Gavin. What does it mean for your firm to win this award?
Gavin Scott: Well, thank you, Matthew, and thank you for having me here this morning. We're delighted to win this award, really are thrilled. Investment is the heart and soul of what we do at Baillie Gifford and it's just fantastic for the hard work of my investment colleagues to be recognized in this way. We recognize how competitive the landscape is across Europe and for us to be recognized in this manner really is great news.
Caquineau: What would you say are the key ingredients to Baillie Gifford's long-term success?
Scott: I'd say there are really three key pillars to our long-term success. The first of those is our exceptional clients. Without having clients, we wouldn't be able to build our business as we have done over the previous decades. It's critical to us that we have clients that understand what it is that we're trying to do for them and work with us in a collaborative manner. I mean, that really is the bedrock of our firm. So, I'd say, the first key ingredient is having exceptional clients.
Secondly, it's our culture. We are an unlimited liability partnership, and we're wholly owned by all the partners that work in the firm. And that means that we are able to ensure our culture is working for our clients, working for our staff in a collaborative fashion and it feeds into all aspects of what we do. And this independence, this true independence really is critical in how we go about investing.
And finally, I'd say, our third key ingredient is our willingness to be different. In what, as I said, a very competitive market it's important that the managers, like ourselves, are acting in a way that is in the longer-term interest of our clients. So, our willingness to be different to take different positions from the market stick by those and behave in the way we would expect – our clients would expect us to behave is critical to our long-term success.
Caquineau: In order to maintain that success, what do you see as the main challenges as an active manager going forward?
Scott: I think it's no secret that we have headwinds in the active industry as we see the reach of passive investing spread across Europe and across the world. But I think in therein lies the answer. It is making sure that we are continuing to do what we have done for over 100 years, add significant value to clients, net of fees. And that additional alpha that we can generate for our clients is what they employ us to do. So, our focus remains as it has done over the many decades before us is to continue to focus on investing in great businesses for our clients and not get distracted by the markets and by short-term noise. If we can continue to do that, and if the industry continues to do that in an active manner, we very much believe that our actual form of investing is really what it is that clients want to see. And we think there's a great future for actual investors going forward.
Caquineau: Gavin, thank you for your time and again, congratulations on winning the award.
Scott: Thank you, Mathieu, and thank you to everybody at Morningstar.
Caquineau: For Morningstar, I'm Mathieu Caquineau.
