Tom Slater
Successor and co-manager from 2015; took over leadership of Scottish Mortgage in 2022
Anderson gradually transitioned management of Scottish Mortgage to Tom Slater over the latter part of his tenure at Baillie Gifford. Slater joined the trust as deputy manager in 2015 and became lead manager when Anderson retired in 2022. Anderson has spoken warmly about Slater's ability to extend the investment philosophy into new areas — particularly private companies and the emerging generation of transformative technology platforms.
Tom Slater
Biography
Tom Slater is a partner at Baillie Gifford and the successor to James Anderson as lead manager of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust. He joined Baillie Gifford in 2000 — initially working in the firm's UK and Japanese equity teams — and moved to the long-term global growth strategies that became his life's work. He became Anderson's deputy on Scottish Mortgage in 2015, joint manager, and finally, on Anderson's retirement at the end of April 2022, the trust's lead manager, with Lawrence Burns as his deputy.
In the corpus of Anderson's letters, Slater appears in two distinct capacities: as a named co-author of the trust's mature philosophy — the manager Anderson entrusted with the institution he had spent two decades rebuilding — and as a writer in his own right, contributing companion sections to the Annual Reports that are among the clearest expositions of the Scottish Mortgage method. His 2016 essay on private companies and his 2017 essay on the rising power of the platform companies are foundational documents of the trust's pivot toward unlisted growth investing. Anderson, who is sparing with praise, wrote that working with Slater was "a great joy," and described how the two would independently reach the same investment conclusions by different reasoning — Slater's background being "more mathematical" than his own.
Key Stories
Impact on Anderson's Work
Co-architect of the mature philosophy. From 2015 onward the annual reports and the strategy documents are genuinely co-authored intellectual products. The risk definition, the unlisted thesis, the platform framework and the governance approach all carry Slater's fingerprints; Anderson's public deference on the risk point shows the direction of influence ran both ways.
The mathematical complement. Anderson repeatedly described their working method as productive duplication: "very often, we leave each other the chance to come to a view, and it's quite interesting how often we agree, but for different reasons." Slater's mathematical training complemented Anderson's historical-philosophical cast — a deliberate cognitive pairing in a firm that hired for "cognitive diversity."
The structural argument. Slater's 2016 doctrine gave Anderson's intuitions an institutional form. The closed-end fund — free of "the liquidity constraints of open-ended funds or the limited life constraints of most venture capital structures" — made Scottish Mortgage the rare pool of public-market capital that founders would actually select, and holding "Amazon shares in size for over ten years" was the credential that opened the door. Anderson's later insistence that Baillie Gifford must preserve Slater's freedom rests on the same logic: the structure is the strategy.
Custodian of the eccentric mandate. Anderson's deepest institutional concern — that success would normalize Scottish Mortgage into conventional management — was addressed through Slater's appointment. "I think Tom is a 100 percent committed to the idea that we need to keep evolving. He might not have used the word 'eccentric,' but I think the desire to keep pushing... Lawrence Burns share[s] that view." The succession was designed so that long-termism and the hunt for transformative companies would outlive their author.
Continuity into new territory. Anderson noted with approval that Slater extended the philosophy into areas beyond his own tenure's core — deeper private-company work, new transformative platforms, the next decade's version of what Tesla and Amazon had been. The handover was framed not as preservation but as evolution: "As the world changes so should we."
The governance co-author. The 2018 Chairman's Statement records that Slater reviewed and refreshed the Managers' Core Investment Beliefs for that year's report — the trust's constitutional document. It was a quiet signal of the transfer of doctrinal authority: the man who had first sharpened the risk definition was now the custodian of the beliefs themselves, years before the formal succession was announced.
Key Passages
"Scottish Mortgage has two important assets when seeking unlisted investments. The first is our reputation as a long-term and supportive custodian. We've held Amazon shares in size for over ten years and that kind of behaviour stands out amidst short-termism elsewhere... Our second asset is our structure. Being closed-ended means that we can own these investments on a long-term time horizon."
— Tom Slater, Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2016
"Retaining private status allows companies to make decisions in a different way from those beholden to stock markets. It allows founders to think long-term and invest in projects without immediate payoffs. Such an approach is often difficult for listed companies."
— Tom Slater, Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2016
"Tom Slater pointed out that we do not believe that risk can be defined as volatility and that doing so indeed detracts from the ability to discern true risk in the form of a permanent loss of capital."
"The vagaries of stock markets will drive our returns over shorter time periods but it will be the success (or otherwise) of these individuals and the companies they are creating that determines the longer run outcome. For us, this is a source of great optimism."
— Tom Slater, Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2017
"Yeah. Well, I think, you know, it's been — first, it's been a great joy to work with Tom... very often, we leave each other the chance to come to a view, and it's quite interesting how often we agree, but for different reasons. And, you know, I found that particularly delightful over the years."
Referenced In
- Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2016
- Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2017
- Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2018
- Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2020
- Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2021
- Stay on the Road Less Travelled (2021)
- Masters in Business Interview (2022)
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2016
It has been a year of sound and fury. In conventional terms it has signified very little. Markets and our portfolio ended the 12 months little changed in prices after varied and frenetic zigzags throughout the period. Mr. Market has been more than usually emotional in his moods but has ended up back much where he was a year ago.
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2017
It may seem self-evident that our objective is to provide an attractive total return after costs for our investors. But this is far less a strategy than a desirable outcome. We have an investment process (described on page 17). Yet this is more about the method than the objective. Ultimately we endeavour to generate returns for savers and shareholders by helping to build and sustain excellent businesses over long periods. We prefer to focus on this task than on the daily gyrations of markets.
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2018
My experience at Scottish Mortgage has also included serving under two Chairmen — the late Sir Donald MacKay and John Scott; that too has been valuable experience for which I am very grateful. I hope that the current Board and the Managers can do justice to the legacy we have inherited for the continuing benefit of all shareholders.
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2019
The Board and Managers focus on pursuing a truly distinctive global investment proposition, working to maximise the Company's competitive advantages. In a frantic world, obsessed with predicting the next 'thing' which might go wrong, Scottish Mortgage's consistent long term approach of patiently investing in outstanding growth businesses across the globe, whether those businesses are public or private, continues to set it apart.
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2020
The resulting global pandemic is creating testing times for everyone and I wish to acknowledge the immediate challenges many face, far beyond the world of investment. I hope all of Scottish Mortgage's shareholders and their families are managing through this difficult period and I recognise that the immediate focus of many may well not be on investment matters.
IC Interview: Tesla's Rise Is a Symbol of a Revolution in Energy
A lot of what's happened, a lot of the companies that we've owned have been powered by progress in Moore's law. We think that progress in Moore's law is underwritten for at least the next 10 to 15 years. A lot of our insights come from ASML, which is in itself a large holding, but that will end up in giving us something like a 60-fold increase in computing power. If you get that, then it's natural that more sectors will be impacted, that we haven't even started thinking about as yet in terms of most commentaries on the world.
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2021
The year to 31 March 2021 was clearly overshadowed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Quite apart from the devastating human cost, it has also created enormous social, economic and business disruption. However, this has also been a period that has supercharged the prospects of several portfolio companies, faster than many might have expected.
Masters in Business: James Anderson on Long-Term Investing
RITHOLTZ: This week on the podcast, man, strap yourself in. I love finding these people, just rock star fund managers who — who just blow everybody else’s doors off, but have somehow managed to maintain a relatively low profile over the decades they’ve been in — in the business, and today’s guest is absolutely an example of that.