Britain’s biggest investment trust has declared it will resist a push from the activist investor Elliott to sell its prized stakes in the privately owned SpaceX and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok.

Tom Slater, who runs the £12.5 billion Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, said there was no need to sell such investments to boost the value of its portfolio.

His resistance came just a week after it emerged that Elliott had taken a stake in the FTSE 100 giant and was pushing for it to begin selling chunks of its stakes in private companies.

Elliott believes the trust’s share price is weak because the market undervalues its private assets. Where shares in plcs are valued every second of trading on the stock market, stakes