Private companies: getting ahead of the crowd

Leo joined Baillie Gifford in 2021. He hosts the firm’s Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking podcast and is also one of our editors. Previously, he was the BBC’s technology desk editor, leading the online team and working on a series of Panorama documentaries. Additionally, he has worked on the broadcaster’s World Business Report and Newsnight Scotland programmes.

Rob is a member of the Private Companies Team at Baillie Gifford. He joined the firm in 2015 and worked on our Emerging Markets and UK Equity Teams before moving to Long Term Global Growth. There he focused on finding stocks for a set of highly concentrated long-term international growth portfolios. He also began working on private companies, in the context of both private funding rounds and existing holdings approaching IPO.

In 2018 he moved to our Private Companies Team to work full-time on identifying high growth late-stage private companies. He has led research on private companies including Tanium, Niantic, Sana, Flixbus and Away, as well as doing follow-up work on pre-existing portfolio holdings. He is working to develop a best-in-class research culture and company support strategy on the team.

Rob graduated BA (Hons) in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford in 2014.