The questioning of the ethical integrity of the prominent UK active fund corporation, Baillie Gifford, has been an intriguing spectacle of recent.
To recap succinctly, Baillie Gifford has been dropped as the main sponsor by the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Hay Festival after a campaign led by an entity known as Fossil Free Books. This entity, backed by a multitude of authors such as Sally Rooney and Naomi Klein, has urged Baillie Gifford to disengage from the fossil fuel sector and all companies implicated in the Israeli occupation, apartheid and mass killing.
Contrary to this, Baillie Gifford is no laggard when it comes to climate change. The firm points out that only an insignificant 2 per cent of client funds are placed in business sectors related to fossil fuels, which is considerably lower than the market’s average of 11 per cent. The firm adopts more of a long-haul strategy and has heavily invested in renewable energy firms like Tesla and Northvolt, a Swedish battery manufacturing firm.
Despite this, Fossil Free Books accuse Baillie Gifford of investing in companies that have either direct or indirect associations with Israel’s defence, tech and cybersecurity industries, namely Nvidia, Amazon and Alphabet. It’s critical to remember, though, that these are amongst the most significant corporations globally, and their transactions with Israel are minuscule in comparison to their entire business operations.
Most public individuals, and indeed anyone with a pension fund or global index funds, are exposed to these companies. With most people using Amazon and Google products, are we all ignoring this so-called “genocide and colonial violence”? That Baillie Gifford is expected to uphold such exacting and faultless standards appears absurd and unreasonable.