Dressed in a pale blue shirt and navy blue jacket, the 62-year-old sitting across the table from me at the Ristorante Cesarina in Bologna could be any British visitor enjoying the city’s medieval architecture and the March Italian sunshine. There are no obvious signs of either fame or fortune. But I am facing a revolutionary — and a successful one too.
James Anderson is an unlikely star of tech investing. Ignoring legions of dissenters, he made big early bets on the likes of Amazon and Tesla when their shares were still a bargain — and hung on to them for years before they turned a profit. Through these contrarian bets, he has helped turn Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford into one of the UK’s top fund managers. He is also something of a Renaissance man, as comfortable taking Tesla chief executive Elon Musk to task as discussing 19th-century French literature, and heavily involved in Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship of literary festivals and a non-fiction prize.
So how is it that this affable figure, whose manner resembles that of a maverick professor rather than a swashbuckling fund manager, has surfed the tech wave and presided over a 15-fold surge in Baillie Gifford’s assets under management over the past two decades?