Edinburgh-based fund manager Walter Scott & Partners said its assets rose 6% to £73.3 billion in the year to December 31, 2023, but turnover was flat at £290.6 million and pre-tax profits fell to £192 million from £210 million.

Walter Scott said in its 2023 accounts it had an average of 174 employees in 2023, with four directors. Salaries and wages rose slightly to £45 million and long term incentive costs rose to £28 million from £19 million in 2022.

Director “emoluments” fell to £11 million from £21 million in 2022.

Dividends paid during the year to “the shareholder” were £163.2 million, down from £205.3 million in 2022.

Walter Scott & Partners is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank of New York Mellon.

The firm’s chair Alex Hammond Chambers wrote that Walter Scott’s investment performance was “good in the circumstances” and “also reasonable against the benchmarks we are measured against and the competition.”

The chair said, however: “Given the undue influence of the very large American tech giants (‘The Magnificent Seven’ – most of which we do not own) on the performance of the Global Strategy benchmark (the MSCI World Index), it would have been difficult to beat the Index.”

The Magificent Seven stocks are Apple, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta Platforms and Tesla.

Walter Scott said charitable donations made in 2023 by its Giving Group totalled £1 million, supporting 69 charities in Scotland and Boston. The firm made no political donations or incurred any political expenditure during the year.