UPDATE: Brian Lum took over from Praveen Kumar as lead manager in May 2025.
Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon (BGS) was launched in 1985 to invest in Japanese smaller companies. It caught the tail end of the 1980s boom in Japanese stocks and then endured a volatile two decades as the bubble steadily deflated. In the twelve years following the financial crisis, BGS produced an astonishing 18-fold gain but since 2021 it has significantly underperformed its benchmark and its shares have more than halved as investors turned away from Baillie Gifford's distinctive style of growth investing. BGS traded ...
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UPDATE: BGFD returned -5% in the year to August 2023, +10% in 2024, +21% in 2025, and +20% in 2026, although its returns lag its benchmark over one, three, five, and ten years. The trust has bought back around a third of its shares since mid-2022 but its discount has averaged around 10% over the past one and three years.
Baillie Gifford Japan (ticker: BGFD) was launched in 1981 and experienced incredible growth during its first decade thanks to the 'Japanese economic miracle' with its share price rising almost tenfold. As most investors will know, Japanese equities have struggled ever since. ...
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