Baillie Gifford’s Ben Durrant has been formally appointed as Roddy Snell’s deputy on Pacific Horizon (PHI ) investment trust.

Durrant (pictured) has worked with Citywire AA-rated Snell on the £625m Asia equities portfolio since June 2021 after the departure of former lead manager Ewan Markson-Brown to Crux Asset Management. 

He has also been a co-manager since then with Snell on the £2.6bn open-ended Baillie Gifford Pacific fund Markson-Brown used to run.

Unusually for a Baillie Gifford growth fund, Pacific Horizon has large weightings to metals and mining stocks alongside the more customary internet and semiconductors companies across China, India and Korea.

The large weighting to China reflect the managers’ belief that the risks of China invading Taiwan are ‘massively overblown’ because the Chinese Communist Party has more important priorities at home, a view Durrant expressed at a shareholder forum in September.

The trust has an excellent longer-term record, with investment returns over five and 10-year periods the best in the AIC’s Asia Pacific sector.

Over five years, net asset value (NAV) has lifted 81.1% compared with the MSCI AC Asia ex-Japan index’s 9.8% return, with the shares rising 83.8%. Over a 10-year period, NAV rose 261% compared with the market’s 95.2%. The shares soared 288.6%.

However, the last 12 months have been more difficult with the trust underperforming the index. NAV fell 16.9% versus the benchmark’s 5.3% fall. Shareholders saw their returns drop 27.6%.