Investment research

We are ambitious and always strive to improve through a culture that gives primacy to investment excellence, learning and innovation.

We operate in a competitive and dynamic environment, so we must constantly strive to get better to succeed. We must be open to change and challenge ourselves to learn and improve.

Questions to ask yourself:

• We provide a supportive learning environment at Baillie Gifford, but we expect investors to take responsibility for their own development. There is no spoon feeding. Are you comfortable with this? Will you take personal responsibility?
• Being a great investor at Baillie Gifford is not about being 'the best' but getting better. Are you prepared for a journey of continuous improvement? Will you pursue challenging feedback?

We will always put the interests of clients ahead of our own.

There is a clarity of purpose at our firm which transcends any mission statement. Looking after other people’s savings is a privilege and we operate to the highest possible ethical standards. Without compromise, we always place the interests of our clients first.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Will you push short-term self-interest aside to prioritise what is best for clients and your colleagues?
• The job of an investor is often intellectually stimulating. However, occasionally there is routine work that just needs to be done for the benefit of our clients. Are you happy to do everything it takes to get the job done, even if that means doing routine work?

We will be engaged and supportive shareholders. We will act in a manner that is supportive of society through the purposeful allocation of capital and the encouragement of sustainable business practices.

By supporting the companies we invest in and helping them realise their visions, we want to be the best shareholder on their register. At the same time, we will hold them to account and encourage them to meet the highest standards of sustainable business practice.

Questions to ask yourself:

• We believe that innovative businesses are important engines of long-term progress. Do you share this belief?
• Companies can have both positive and negative impacts. Many people crave certainty and struggle to balance conflicting evidence in developing a view. Are you capable of developing this skill?

Long-termism is central to our investment philosophies and the way we run our firm. Our time horizon is an investment advantage and enables our committed investment in our people and capabilities.

Our long-term approach to investing helps us to think differently, tolerate volatility, and it leads us to cultivate genuine relationships with the companies we invest in. Our long-termism is enabled by our organisational structure. As a partnership, we do not answer to outside shareholders, which means we can run our business and our investments for the long term.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Our five-year-plus investment horizon means that feedback loops are long. It takes years for investment cases to play out. Are you comfortable with uncertainty and that your decisions may not always be ‘right’?

We operate with aligned autonomy. We value intellectual freedom and non-conformity. We respect the ideas of others. We are open, transparent, and supportive. We accept the responsibility implicit with autonomy - we share our objectives and ask others to hold us to account.

The ability to operate with intellectual freedom and to innovate is valuable. We operate with autonomy but also share ideas and leverage expertise. It is this combination of freedom and alignment that makes our investment culture unique.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Other investors may write research which challenges your own views. Are you OK with differences in opinion and with there not being a single ’Baillie Gifford view’?
• Are you willing to embrace that aligned autonomy does not mean agreement but rather respect for ideas and shared responsibility?

We lead and organise ourselves with context over controls. Responsibility and function are distributed wherever possible. We have few rules, but our values are non-negotiable.

Teams and individuals at Baillie Gifford are given a lot of freedom. We have no ‘chief investment officer’ and there is very little top-down decision making. This helps foster an environment of experimentation and creativity, but it requires collective responsibility and commitment to our values.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Are you a self-starter who gets on with things without needing to be told explicitly what to do?
• Are you willing to get behind the core values outlined in this section?