07 Dec 2011

Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011 Review 

Baillie Gifford has been involved with the Edinburgh Book Festival since 2001. Our motivation in the past has been primarily to support one of the city’s most valuable local cultural events. However, in the search for new sources of information, our investors are increasingly focusing on academic works and authors to gain more thoughtful views than those typically available from the financial community.

During the 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival, we held small group discussions with several visiting authors in the Baillie Gifford library, covering topics as diverse as the fall of Communism in Poland, the Libyan revolution, the history of Russia and what China might look like in a few years’ time. All these countries are undergoing important changes with long-term implications for the world economy.

We hope that the insights we gathered by talking to these expert commentators will help us to become better investors, and more able to go against the western-focused, gloomy tide of short-term stock market commentary.

The following reviews of four of this year’s events underline the extent to which the authors can enhance the firm’s research.

You can download the article here.