Amar Bhidé, a non-executive director at Scottish Mortgage Trust (SMT ), has told the Financial Times he was removed from the investment trust’s board yesterday after disagreeing with the chair Fiona McBain over appointments and the risks of its £3.8bn investments in unquoted companies.

Bhidé, a business academic and author who joined the board of the Baillie Gifford flagship in 2020, told the paper he had been concerned about the global growth trust’s share price performance and discount. Shares in the long-term outperformer have more than halved since November 2021 as technology and growth stocks have crashed and stand 18% below net asset value, reducing the FTSE-listed trust’s value to £9.5bn.

The wide discount partly reflects investors’ unease over the long tail of unlisted stocks that accounted for 27% of the portfolio at the end of January, close to a 30% cap.  

Bhidé, 67, claimed the low-charging trust lacked the resources of venture capital firms to oversee its private investments. ‘In my opinion they do not have the capabilities and governance clout to be able to monitor the illiquid investments on which there is little audited information in the public sphere.

‘The fact that you’ve pulled it off for the last 10 years has been due to an utterly aberrant period in financial history. Don’t delue yourself that you can keep playing this game.’

Baillie Gifford and Scottish Mortgage have been asked to comment. 

Bhidé is the Schmidheiny Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. According to the Scottish Mortgage website, he has written numerous books, articles and case studies on entrepreneurship, finance, globalisation and medical innovation.