All change at Baillie Gifford as new faces are made partners

The five promotions, which will come into effect on 1 May, take the size of the partnership up to 37, following the retirement of four partners.

Alex Callander – joint senior partner at the firm, which manages £70 billion-worth of funds, making it one of Scotland’s five largest asset managers – said the appointments reflected the growth of the company.

“In these challenging times, it is pleasing that our business continues to grow steadily in terms of numbers of clients, staff and partners,” he said.

Callander said the promotions were not direct replacements for the retiring staff, but instead that “it was felt to be the right time” to add them to the partnership.

The new partners are: Larysa Bemko, the firm’s New York-based director of marketing, who joined in 2002 and is responsible for business development in the Americas; Tim Campbell, who joined in 1999, is a director in the institutional clients department; Angus Franklin, who moved to Baillie Gifford in 1994 and is now a senior portfolio manager with its international equities team; Kave Sigaroudinia, head of research for the developed markets team; and Tom Slater, who joined in 2000 and is a senior portfolio manager in the firm’s long-term global growth team and also deputy manager of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.

The four partners retiring from Baillie Gifford are Alex Callander, Edward Hocknell, Nigel Morecroft and Leslie Robb.

Baillie Gifford was founded in 1908 and now employs nearly 700 staff.

Funds managed by the firm include Edinburgh Worldwide, Mid Wynd, Monks, Pacific Horizon and Shin Nippon.

The fund manager hit the headlines last year after it backed Michael Woodford, the ousted British-born chief executive of Olympus, in his bid to return to the helm of the Japanese camera and medical instruments maker, which was rocked by a $1.7bn (£1.1bn) accounting scandal.

Samsung, Sony and Panasonic have all been linked with possible bids or partnerships with Olympus.