By Elliot Gulliver-Needham
Baillie Gifford, one of the largest asset managers in the UK, has been met with a wave of boycotts over its investments in fossil fuels and firms operating in Israel, eventually leading to the end of its long-running sponsorship of Edinburgh Book Festival.
Hay festival, which Baillie Gifford also sponsored, parted with the firm last month, with Edinburgh Book Festival following soon after.
“Once the relationship with Hay collapsed, that put pressure on the Edinburgh relationship,” James Budden, director of marketing and distribution at Baillie Gifford, told City A.M.
Baillie Gifford had sponsored the Edinburgh Book Festival since 2010, stepping in after the Royal Bank of Scotland pulled out after its implosion following the financial crisis.
Budden argued that he found it “quite difficult to see the connection” between climate change and Israel’s occupation of Palestine which the protests had focused on, but said that “activism is maybe what links them”.
While protests began against the sponsorship in 2023, they ramped up this year after Authors for Gaza partnered with the original group protesting the festival, Fossil Free Books.
This led to over 700 authors and publishers, including Sally Rooney and Naomi Klein, signing a letter demanding the sponsor be dropped.
“Hay festival felt that financially it could have been ruinous to carry on with us as one of our key sponsors, and also they were genuinely afraid of some kind of physical intimidation through disruption and protest actually at the festival,” said Budden.
“We’ve been having ongoing discussions with other book festivals,” he added, with Cheltenham Literature Festival and Borders Book Festival also breaking ties with Baillie Gifford this week.
Budden said that he could not see any “tangible benefits” for the sponsorships ending, describing the events as “tragic”.
“Hopefully, lessons may be learned from this which will perhaps lend the audiences or those involved in these engagements to be a bit more sensible and logistic in the way that they approach this,” he concluded.
The protests have been criticised for focusing on companies that simply have commercial dealings within Israel, such as Amazon and Nvidia, and those with problematic operations in the occupied territories, which represent only £300m of investment from Baillie Gifford.
“We have been engaging with those companies. This work has been going on since the conflict broke out and in all three cases progress has been made,” a spokesperson from Baillie Gifford said.
Meanwhile, the asset manager has noted that only two per cent of its investment was in fossil fuel companies, compared to five per cent invested in companies dedicated to renewable energy.
Last month, City A.M. revealed that dozens of environmental, social and governance-focused funds have been investing directly in companies supplying Israel’s military with weapons used during its ongoing invasion of Gaza.
