The chair of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust is standing down following a corporate governance row.
Fiona McBain, who has been in the position since 2017 - and sat on its board for 14 years - will leave after the trust’s annual meeting in June.
The tech-focused investment company, which is a client of Baillie Gifford, also revealed that Amar Bhidé has left the board, after he questioned McBain’s independence and raised concerns over exposure to illiquid investments.
Bhidé, a business professor at Tufts University, who had been a director of Scottish Mortgage since 2020, told the Financial Times last week that he had clashed with McBain over the process to appoint two new board members and his assessment of the risks posed by investments in unquoted companies, valued at £3.8bn at the end of January.
McBain will be succeeded by senior independent director Justin Dowley, who also chairs Melrose Industries and is a deputy chair of the Takeover Panel.
In a statement, McBain said: “I have complete confidence that Scottish Mortgage’s board provides robust governance and oversight.
“Current topics such as short-term volatility and the company’s exposure to private companies have been debated at length and will continue to be scrutinised by the board.”
Meanwhile, Patrick Maxwell will replace Dowley as senior independent director, while Paola Subacchi will also leave the board at the next annual meeting.
The trust stated that it had been conducting a recruitment process over the past few months with an external firm, “with a view to further board refreshment”, as part of a process that was “well advanced”.
Scottish Mortgage, one of the UK’s oldest investment trusts, also lost its co-manager James Anderson last summer.
At the time he claimed that the fund management industry was “irretrievably broken”, blaming a focus on short-term returns and “seeking minor opportunities in banal companies”.
Anderson generated significant returns for investors by backing to tech firms such as Tesla, Amazon, Tencent and Alibaba.
However, the trust’s shares have fallen amid the recent tech rout, dropping by 34% over the past year.
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