The UK’s biggest investment trust Scottish Mortgage has said the “destructive short-term demands of Wall Street” are changing how tomorrow’s technology giants are raising capital.

Scotland’s most successful big investment fund in recent years, the £3.4billion trust managed by James Anderson and Tom Slater at Baillie Gifford saw net asset value fall by 10.9 per cent and share price by 9.7per cent in the turbulent six months to September 30.

But that still beat the 11.8per cent fall in the world index, and over five years the trust’s share price is up 104 per cent against 48 per cent for the index.

The shares closed up 6.3p at 271.4p, not far off their all-time high of 281p hit in April.

The half-year saw the trust make a raft of new investments in unlisted companies including Airbnb the online travel platform, Home24 a European online furniture retailer, Funding Circle, the leading peer-to-peer lender to the UK small business sector, and Thumbtack, a US-based online directory for tradesmen’s services.

It now holds 10per cent of the portfolio in 16 unlisted companies, hoping to repeat the hefty gains made from Baillie Gifford’s high profile in Silicon Valley which has seen it negotiate generous stakes in businesses such as Facebook and Twitter when they have come to the market.

The trust’s chairman John Scott said: “The trend of companies preferring to raise capital in the private markets and list on a public stock exchange much later in their development has progressed further and faster than expected.

“This is an extremely important shift for growth investors who primarily invest in the public equity markets, as it results in a loss of access to a considerable period of value creation in these exciting growth companies.”

In a nod to Mr Anderson’s forthright views, Mr Scott went on: “The destructive short term demands of Wall Street in particular around quarterly earnings targets for public companies, combined with the lower capital requirements of many of these businesses, have contributed to this trend to raise capital in the private market, rather than through an earlier listing on a stock exchange.

“Instead companies are seeking to partner with a relatively small number of investors who share their long term horizon.”

The trust has a £350m investment in Amazon, its biggest holding, and in an interview with The Herald in July, Mr Anderson said its managers had “pushed Amazon quite hard on the issue of taxation” and discussed conditions inside its distribution centres.

The trust’s second biggest holding is gene technology pioneer Illumina, and its top ten includes Facebook, Google, electric carmaker Tesla, and the Chinese ‘big three’ tech giants Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. Mr Anderson sees healthcare as the next big area of long-term potential, possibly followed by education.

Almost 80 per cent of the trust is held in the top 30 stocks, and the chairman said the higher proportion of unlisted investments did not reflect a change in investment strategy, only in the way the market was working. It has 73 equity holdings in all.

“The investment philosophy underpinning the portfolio remains the same. The managers continue to take a committed, long-term approach to investing in businesses across the world which have the potential to grow much faster than the broader market.”

The trust reported continuing strong demand for its shares, prompting the issue of 48million new shares bringing in proceeds of £128m. Mr Scott said: “As the largest conventional investment trust, the board firmly believes that Scottish Mortgage’s size is a clear competitive advantage, as costs are spread over a wider shareholder base enabling us to offer lower costs to all.”

However he sounded a cautious note over the future of the dividend, which was held at 1.38p, after earnings per share fell 24per cent from 1.62p to 1.23p.

A large number of companies in the portfolio were reinvesting rather than paying cash out to shareholders, which ought to help future capital growth and benefit the trust, but would affect earnings, the chairman warned.

“The board is aware that dividends are important to a number of shareholders and the intention remains at least to maintain the dividend.”