Long-serving Baillie Gifford bond fund manager Torcail Stewart is leaving the company to train to become a teacher.
Stewart jointly ran the Baillie Gifford Strategic Bond fund, a £450mn mandate which has returned 10 per cent over the past year compared with 7.5 per cent for the average fund in the IA Strategic Bond sector in the same time period.
However taking a three-year view the performance was weaker, losing 6.2 per cent, compared with a 1.9 per cent loss for the average fund in the sector in the same time period.
A representative of the company told FT Adviser: “Torcail Stewart has decided to leave Baillie Gifford to pursue a career in teaching. He has been spending some of his spare time volunteering as a teaching assistant over the last two years and has now decided to pursue a new challenge in teaching having worked in financial services for over two decades.
"He was co-manager of our Strategic Bond fund, alongside Lesley Dunn (partner and head of credit) and Rob Baltzer (head of credit research).
"Lesley and Rob have 46 years of experience between them and will continue to run the fund together. As a consequence, Rob will step down from managing our High Yield Bond fund and his existing co-managers, Arthur Wilson and Faisal Islam, will continue to run that fund together.”
Stewart will remain with the firm until mid-August to help with the transition.
FT Adviser recently reported that a number of bond fund managers were made redundant from Baillie Gifford.
Data from our sister publication Asset Allocator showed wealth managers have been exiting the Baillie Gifford Strategic Bond fund in recent years, as it grappled with performance issues.
The data showed two of the wealth portfolios tracked by Asset Allocator sold the fund in 2023, the same number as sold it in 2022, and the product is not owned by any of the allocators on the database.
david.thorpe@ft.com
