Baillie Gifford’s Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking bring valuable insights into the benefits of taking the long view. You’ll hear frank, thought-provoking opinions from our team in Edinburgh and experts around the world. These podcasts do not constitute an offer of or solicitation for purchase or sale of securities or provision of any investment services. They are provided for information only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment. Our podcasts have been compiled with considerable care to ensure their accuracy at the date of publication. No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made to their accuracy or completeness. For further details please see our legal information at www.bailliegifford.com
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Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking - Baillie Gifford, a podcast by Baillie Gifford - Stats, Episodes and Rankings - My Podcast Data
Emerging markets: when the crowd gets it wrong
Monday, September 28, 2026 • Duration 27:28
The biggest car-carrying ships on the planet. A chip-testing rig that weighs as much as a small elephant. Investment manager Alex Summers takes us inside some of emerging markets’ least-watched growth companies to explain how his team sees what others have missed. “Often, the crowd is going to be right,” he acknowledges, but when it’s not, long-termism, access to management and asking different questions are key to how his team determines investment opportunities.
Background:
Alex Summers is co-manager of our Emerging Markets Leading Companies Fund, an investment manager in our Emerging Markets Equity Team and a member of the International Growth Portfolio Construction Group.
In this conversation, he tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion why one of his team’s guiding principles is that before investing in a company, he and his colleagues must be able to articulate the critical uncertainty about a stock and why others may be wrong.
“Often, you can observe something about a company, and it may be true,” he explains. “But if everybody else believes that, you’re not going to create any additional outperformance by owning those companies.”
Companies discussed include:
Hyundai Glovis – the logistics company that’s invested in a dozen ultra-sized ships and now sees an opportunity in transporting spent electric vehicle batteries
Chroma ATE – the test-equipment company whose customised cabinets provide critical checks for NVIDIA and Nasa
Silergy – the mainland China-based semiconductor company specialising in power-management chips
Reliance Industries – India’s most valuable company and its heavy investment in solar panels, green hydrogen and battery storage systems
Toss – the South Korean financial super-app that provides banking, payment and ecommerce services
Magnificent Seven: A nickname for seven large US technology-related companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Tesla.
Holding period: The length of time an investment is owned.
Corporate governance: The systems and processes by which a company is directed and controlled, including board accountability and the treatment of shareholders.
Minority shareholder: An investor who owns less than a controlling stake in a company and cannot direct it alone.
Bottom-up investing: Assessing individual companies rather than starting with forecasts for economies, markets or sectors.
Economies of scale: Advantages that arise as a company handles more volume, reducing the average cost of each unit.
Profit margin: The proportion of revenue left as profit after costs have been deducted.
Graphics processing unit (GPU): A chip designed to perform many calculations in parallel, originally for graphics but now also widely used in AI.
Analog chip: A semiconductor that processes continuous real-world signals, such as sound, temperature or voltage.
Flotation or initial public offering (IPO): The process by which a private company first offers shares to public investors and lists them on a stock exchange.
Cash flow: The movement of money into and out of a business over time.
Capital allocation: The decisions a company makes about how to use its money, such as investing in growth, making acquisitions, paying dividends or reducing debt.
Business vertical: A distinct business area within a company, usually focused on a particular product, service or market.
Overweight: Holding more of an investment, sector or theme than the index used for a comparison.
Fintech: Technology-driven financial services, such as digital payments, lending or banking tools.
Insurance brokerage: A business that helps customers compare and buy insurance, acting as an intermediary between them and insurers.
Capital-light: Describes a business that needs relatively little investment in physical assets to operate and grow.
Greek loans, Polish denim, German cookers: the new shape of European growth
Monday, August 31, 2026 • Duration 31:14
“Europe looks more like emerging markets than it does North America,” Joe Faraday, Baillie Gifford’s new head of European equities, suggests in this conversation. He means that growth takes many forms across the continent, creating an eclectic mix of companies to choose from and specific circumstances to consider. As he reveals, it’s led him to reposition the portfolios under his watch, broadening the types of companies they contain.
Background:
Joe Faraday is our head of European equities and investment manager of the Baillie Gifford European Growth Trust and European Fund.
In this conversation, he tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion about some of the stocks he has added to and removed from the portfolios of our European Growth Strategy. Faraday took charge earlier this year with a mandate to improve performance.
“We’ve changed rather a lot,” he says, regarding efforts to broaden the mix of growth themes the portfolios he manages tap into, while ensuring that he grounds each buy or sell decision on an intimate understanding of each stock.
Companies discussed include:
Piraeus Bank – Greece’s biggest lender, expanding its reach with new insurance, asset management and digital banking services
LPP – the Polish retail group behind Sinsay, the rapidly growing fashion and homeware brand big in central and eastern Europe
TotalEnergies – the French energy group involved in exploration and production, liquefied natural gas and renewables
Rheinmetall – the German defence contractor, whose activities range from drones and armoured vehicles to ammunition and satellites
Bending Spoons – the Italian app acquirer that rearchitects and revitalises mature digital businesses
Rational – the German manufacturer of ‘combi ovens’ designed for commercial kitchens
SpaceX: past, present, future – and finding the next world-changers
Tuesday, August 4, 2026 • Duration 36:17
Baillie Gifford first invested in SpaceX in 2018, nearly eight years before its record-setting stock market listing. Investment manager Luke Ward, who championed the holding, discusses what first drew him to the business, why Starship is critical to its future, and reveals where he’s now looking for another company with industry-upturning potential.
Background:
Luke Ward is an investment manager on Baillie Gifford’s Private Companies Team and co-manager of Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust.
In this conversation, he tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion how SpaceX’s first successful landing and recovery of one of its rocket boosters led him to explore an investment in the company, and how he gained access to its senior management.
Ward also explores three growth drivers that could determine its future success:
regularly flying a new, larger spacecraft, Starship, into orbit
upgrading its Starlink broadband network with satellites that connect to smartphones directly
putting and operating datacentres in orbit
In addition, he discusses some of the risks in being a long-term shareholder in the Elon Musk-run endeavour.
Ward also reveals why he thinks the construction industry is ripe for disruption from 3D-printing robots.
Tokenisation represents an “operating system upgrade” for the investment industry, says Theo Golden, Baillie Gifford’s new head of digital assets. In this episode, they explain what it involves and how it should deliver a better experience, both by reducing the number of middlemen between you and your investments and making your holdings more “useful”.
Background:
In this conversation, Theo Golden tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion about how tokenisation can reduce costs and complexity – and pave the way for providing clients with new services that better fit their needs.
Tokenisation means taking an asset – such as a fund – and turning it into a line of code. This lives on a blockchain: a shared digital record that no single party owns or controls. The investment itself doesn't change, but what does are the ways that ownership is recorded and transferred. Instead of a chain of intermediaries, each keeping their own set of books, everyone can work from one shared record. As Golden puts it, it's “the same but better” – the same investments, on faster, lower-cost, more flexible rails built for the internet age.
It also paves the way to new capabilities. Among those Golden discusses are making it much easier for clients to use the funds they invest in as collateral for loans, and the development of “agentic wealth management” – AI bots that autonomously plan and, potentially, update an individual client’s portfolio based on their risk appetite and changing circumstances.
Baillie Gifford’s first steps with tokenisation involve fixed income, but in time the ambition is to “build across our investment universe,” Golden says. “So be ready for Baillie Gifford on chain.”
Why American culture feels so chaotic – and how investors can benefit
Monday, June 1, 2026 • Duration 36:38
The US public’s tastes and habits are fragmenting, leading to new consumer behaviours. The shift from a handful of TV networks to an endless supply of streamed shows and social media clips is just one of many causes. Investment manager Dave Bujnowski discusses the characteristics that determine which growth companies should thrive in the resulting ‘high entropy’ environment.
Dave Bujnowski is an investment manager in our US Equity Growth Team and co-manager of the Baillie Gifford U.S. Equity Growth Fund and our American Fund.
In this conversation, he tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion about his work with anthropologist Dr Grant McCracken, studying the causes and effects of the fragmentation of American culture. They believe that US culture is a system that has entered a ‘high entropy state’ – meaning that tastes and habits no longer change in an orderly manner. The result is “tremendous instability” and a sense of “continual pandemonium”.
This shift, they argue, has implications for growth companies and helps explain why some are struggling to maintain mass-market appeal. But the disorder also plays to others' advantage, and they have sought to identify which will thrive and why.
Portfolio companies discussed include:
· Cloudflare – the service that protects websites from attack and optimises their performance
· DraftKings – the sports gambling platform that lets Americans bet on sporting events
· Samsara – the Internet of Things specialist helping companies track and make sense of data
· SharkNinja – the home appliance company behind the CREAMi ice-cream maker
· Shopify – the ecommerce platform serving merchants
·
Resources:
The big squeeze: when bottlenecks work to your advantage
Monday, May 4, 2026 • Duration 34:44
Bottlenecks often act as constraints on growth, but companies that create funnels through them can gain pricing power and capture long-term value. Investment manager Mike Taylor reveals some of the companies he thinks achieve this best and how he spots such pinch points before they fully form.
Mike Taylor is a Baillie Gifford partner, an investment manager in its Global Alpha Strategy and a co-manager of The Monks Investment Trust.
In this conversation, he tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion about how bottlenecks can confer an advantage on companies that sit astride them. That includes those that serve a mismatch between supply and demand created by others, and those whose products and services create a new pinch point, which they control. In addition, he explains why mixing a cocktail of bottlenecks in his portfolios can deliver smoother growth for their shareholders.
Portfolio companies discussed include:
Medpace – the drug and biologic contract research organisation
Games Workshop – the maker of the Warhammer tabletop battle games
Tidewater – the provider of offshore vessels to the oil and gas sector
Freeport-McMoRan – the mining company that produces gold and copper, among other minerals
DISCO – the precision tools company, widely used in the semiconductor industry
Samsung Electronics – the electronics conglomerate
The active edge: the case for growth in uncertain times
Monday, March 16, 2026 • Duration 38:56
A series of “extraordinary” events has made the environment more challenging for growth stocks. But “this level of trepidation can’t go on forever”, says Baillie Gifford partner Stuart Dunbar in this latest episode, suggesting that patient investors will benefit when stability returns and the markets value exceptional companies at a premium again.
Stuart Dunbar is a director in Baillie Gifford’s Clients Department and is responsible for helping shape and communicate the firm’s investment philosophy.
In this conversation, he considers how a succession of disruptive events – the most recent being the current war in the Middle East – has rattled markets and led investors to focus on companies’ short-term profits rather than their long-term potential.
However, this period of flux will not last forever, he argues. And when we re-enter a period of stability, patience should be rewarded as markets recognise exceptional companies’ future earnings potential and price them accordingly.
In the meantime, Baillie Gifford’s investment teams remain focused on finding and supporting businesses that will prosper from change and supporting their management to take the long view. And as Dunbar reveals, as the sources of growth broaden out, we are backing some companies that come as a surprise.
Portfolio companies discussed include:
Astera Labs – the semiconductor chip designer, whose products tackle data bottlenecks in AI datacentres
IREN – the datacentre operator whose clients include Microsoft
Medpace – a contract research organisation that biotech and pharmaceutical companies hire to run their clinical trials
Nu Holdings – owner of the Latin American fintech Nubank
Spotify – the audio streaming platform that lets people listen to music, podcasts and audiobooks
WillScot – North America’s largest provider of temporary space rentals, leasing out modular offices, portable storage containers and classroom units
China’s new growth leaders: inventing, not copying
Friday, February 13, 2026 • Duration 32:16
From new cancer drugs to batteries and robotics – China’s top-tier growth companies are forging paths of their own rather than following in the west’s footsteps. Investment manager Sophie Earnshaw names companies that have caught her eye and explains why being a long-term stock picker differs in China from elsewhere.
Background:
Sophie Earnshaw is a decision-maker on our China Equities Strategy and joint manager of the Baillie Gifford China Growth Trust.
In this conversation, she tells Short Briefings… host Leo Kelion about a select group of Chinese companies breaking new ground, supported by the state’s efforts to become self-sufficient in more of today’s critical technologies and a leader in some of those of the future.
Earnshaw also details how the “phenomenal rate” at which companies are born, scale and die in the country makes stock-picking a challenging task – making the access we have to company leaders, academics and other local expertise core to our mission of finding the best firms to invest in on behalf of our clients.
Portfolio companies discussed include:
- CATL – the battery maker whose products power electric vehicles worldwide and increasingly support the renewable energy sector
- BeOne and Innovent Biologics – pharmaceutical firms developing the next generation of cancer drugs
- AMEC and NAURA – semiconductor equipment makers enabling China to develop increased self-reliance in computer chips
- Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent – China’s ‘big tech’ companies, whose artificial intelligence tools are becoming embedded into people’s daily lives
- MiniMax – the AI startup rolling out video and agentic tools at a fraction of the cost of western counterparts
- Horizon Robotics – the automated driving tech provider with its eye on an even bigger opportunity.
Smarter models, sharper founders: growth investing in the AI era
Wednesday, January 14, 2026 • Duration 35:48
With developments in generative AI progressing at such a furious pace, how can investors cut through the noise to identify the companies that will really matter? Baillie Gifford’s Kyle McEnery shares his approach to meeting the entrepreneurs building the future – including his encounters with AppLovin, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Roblox and Reddit.
Background:
Kyle McEnery is an investment manager in our Long Term Global Growth Team (LTGG) and previously led Baillie Gifford’s Artificial Intelligence Research Project.
In this conversation, he tells host Leo Kelion why AI’s ever-increasing capabilities make this one of the most exciting times to be a growth investor, and how leadership and culture act as signals in the noise to help identify companies with the greatest long-term growth potential.
In addition to discussing which of the firms enabling and using today’s language-based ‘frontier’ AI models are leading the pack, he explains how efforts to understand and simulate real-world physics could unlock further progress.
Portfolio companies discussed include:
Anthropic – developer of the Claude AI models, which excel at coding, among other tasks.
NVIDIA – the semiconductors firm whose accelerator chips are powering many of the advances in generative AI.
Roblox – the video games platform whose Cube 3D technology allows creators to build objects and environments out of text-based descriptions.
AppLovin – the ad-tech company whose AI-first strategy keeps the business lean and nimble.
Reddit – the online discussion forum, whose authentic human conversations are gaining in value as a counterpoint to AI-generated output.
Resources:
Emerging market companies leapfrogging western rivals
Tuesday, December 16, 2025 • Duration 28:29
From Pony.ai launching a robo-taxi service during a Shanghai storm to E Ink revolutionising the way supermarkets label their shelves – emerging market companies are in many cases leapfrogging western counterparts. In this episode, investment manager Alice Stretch reveals to host Leo Kelion some of the most disruptive companies innovating at speed in Asia and Latin America.
Background:
Alice Stretch is an investment manager in Baillie Gifford’s Emerging Markets Equity Team. In this conversation, recorded as part of our annual Disruption Week briefings, she explores some of the growth companies in her portfolios turning constraints to their advantage and reducing friction in their customers’ lives.
Companies discussed include:
PolicyBazaar – the Indian insurance platform making it easier for people to protect themselves against life’s financial shocks.
Nubank – the Brazilian digital lender extending access to banking and credit.
Meituan – the food delivery and local services app extending its reach beyond China.
MercadoLibre – the Latin American ecommerce and fintech giant expanding into advertising.
Mobile World – the Vietnamese conglomerate that has expanded from mobile phones to competitively priced groceries.
Sea Ltd – the Singaporean gaming, shopping and fintech group eyeing the possibilities of agentic AI.
TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) – the world’s leading chip manufacturer.
E Ink – the Taiwanese e-paper pioneer building on its ebook success to provide supermarkets with updateable price tags and marketers with low-power digital billboards.
Pony.ai – the first driverless car company to offer a robo-taxi service in four of China’s most populous cities.
16:30 Rheinmetall – a catch-all defence contractor
19:05 LPP – the Zara of eastern Europe
22:20 Piraeus Bank pushes into insurance
24:40 LVMH and the outlook for luxury
26:40 Building on Bending Spoons
28:50 “Decisive action has been taken”
29:35 Book choice
Glossary of terms (in order of mention):
Small-cap: Shares in companies with relatively small total stock market values.
Compound: Gains that build on earlier gains, so an investment’s value can grow at an increasing rate over time.
Exploration and production: The part of the oil and gas industry that searches for reserves and extracts them.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG): Natural gas cooled into liquid form so it can be stored and transported more easily.
Integrated power: A business that combines several parts of the electricity system, such as generation, trading and supply, often across conventional and renewable sources.
Capital allocation: The decisions a company makes about how to use its money, including investing in operations, buying businesses, repaying debt or returning cash to shareholders.
Free cash flow: Cash left after a company has paid its operating costs and the investment needed to maintain or expand the business.
Capital markets day: An event where a listed company gives investors and analysts detailed information about its strategy, operations and financial prospects.
International Monetary Fund (IMF): An international institution that monitors economies, advises governments and can lend to countries facing financial difficulty.
Flotation: The process by which a private company lists its shares on a public stock market, often through an initial public offering (IPO).
02:10 Investing inside and outside Baillie Gifford
03:55 Defining bottlenecks
04:45 How Medpace helps biotechs meet regulatory requirements
07:35 Founder-leader, August Troendle
09:30 Stress testing the bottleneck
12:00 Games Workshop creates its own pinch point
14:50 Shepherding Warhammer over the long term
17:45 Mixing bottlenecks to reduce volatility
20:05 Tidewater and the coming offshore vessel shortage
23:30 Freeport-McMoRan feeds the US’s copper needs
26:20 AI bottlenecks: silicon wafers and high-bandwidth memory
30:00 Enduring versus fleeting bottlenecks
31:25 Book choice
Glossary of terms (in order of mention):
Adenovirus: A common type of virus that can cause mild illnesses such as colds, sore throats or conjunctivitis, but can also be modified for medical uses such as delivering genes into cells.
Gene therapy: A treatment that works by adding, altering or replacing genes inside a patient’s cells to treat disease.
Clinical trials: Research studies in people that test whether a medicine, treatment or medical approach is safe and effective.
FDA: The US Food and Drug Administration, the regulator responsible for approving medicines, vaccines and medical devices in the United States.
Contract research organisation: An organisation that helps biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies run clinical trials.
Private partnership: A business owned by its partners rather than by public shareholders.
Supernormal profits: Profits above what would normally be expected in a competitive market.
Supply side: The part of an industry concerned with how much of a product or service companies can provide.
Demand side: The part of an industry concerned with how much customers want or need a product or service.
Rate limiter: The factor that determines the maximum speed at which something can grow, expand or be produced.
Novel therapies: New types of medical treatments, often based on recent scientific advances.
Intellectual property (IP): Legal rights over creations such as brands, stories, characters, designs, patents or software.
Free cash flow: The cash a company produces after paying the costs needed to run and maintain the business.
Energy transition: The shift from fossil-fuel-based energy systems toward lower-carbon sources such as renewables, batteries and electrification.
Compute: The processing power needed to train or run AI models or other computing tasks.
High-bandwidth memory (HBM): A type of advanced memory chip that can move very large amounts of data quickly to processors, making it especially useful for AI systems.
Steam turbine: A device that uses steam to spin a wheel or rotor, converting heat energy into mechanical motion.
Third plenum: a major policy meeting of China’s ruling Communist Party, often used to set big economic/political direction.
Sovereign bond issuance: The government raising money by selling bonds (IOUs) to investors.
Opportunity set: the range of investable companies available to choose from.
Capex: capital expenditure – money spent on long-term assets like factories, equipment, or data centres.
Fiscal deficit target: how much more the government plans to spend than it collects in revenue (taxes plus other income), expressed as a share of the economy.
GDP: gross domestic product – the total value of goods and services a country produces in a year.
Market capitalisation: the total value of a company’s shares (share price × number of shares).
ESG: environmental, social and governance – how a company manages environmental impact, people issues, and corporate oversight.
Large-form batteries: big battery packs used in things like electric vehicles and grid storage.
Energy storage systems: large batteries that store electricity for later use (helping balance the grid).
Generic drugs: copies of medicines whose patents have expired; usually cheaper, same active ingredient.
Bi-specific (bispecific) drugs: drugs designed to bind to two targets at once (often to direct immune cells to cancer).
ADC drugs: antibody–drug conjugates – antibodies that deliver a toxic payload to cancer cells.
Out-licensing: selling rights to your drug/technology to another company (often for upfront + milestone payments).
EUV machines: extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment used to make the most advanced chips.
Foundry: a factory business that manufactures chips for other companies.
Etch and deposition: steps in chipmaking – etch removes material to form patterns, deposition adds thin layers.
Picks and shovels: a metaphor for companies that sell essential tools to an industry (rather than end products).
Digitalisation: moving processes and services from offline to software and data-driven systems.
Compute: the processing power (chips and servers) used to train/run AI.
Large language model (LLM): an AI trained on lots of text to generate and understand language.
Margins: how much profit a company makes per pound/dollar of revenue (after costs).
Cloud business: selling computing power/storage/software over the internet instead of on a local machine.
Algorithm layer: the method or software logic that makes the AI work (as distinct from the hardware).
Gross margin: revenue minus direct costs (before overheads), a rough measure of product profitability.
Assisted driving: features that help a driver (lane-keeping, adaptive cruise control, etc) but don’t fully replace them.
Autonomous driving: a car driving itself with minimal or no human input.
Software attachment rate: the percentage of customers who add paid software features and/or subscriptions.
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