Cross is emphatically not a modern-day laird, dabbling in the market in between gymkhanas and PTA meetings. He spends three days a month in London, marketing his funds, comparing notes with Jeremy Lang and the other managers. He keeps an office in Edinburgh for meetings and, unlike his fellow Liontrust mangers, chooses to visit the companies in which he has a significant stake. And he somehow processes the 150 emails a day, tons of reports and endless trading updates in that small corner office behind the tricycle and the frog wellies.

“There is a danger of information overload,” Cross admits. “The big drawback of the job is the amount of reading I have to do. There is so much more stuff than when I started. Preliminaries, interims, AGM updates, five, six chunks of news a day.”

Liontrust has a philosophical view on temporal and geographic theory as far as the fund managers go. Marketing manager Nick Pilkington puts it succinctly: “Place is irrelevant; time is highly protected. Their work on behavioural finance is very cerebral, so highly-protected time is essential.”

For Cross, the crucial period of ring-fenced time was his first three months with the “I like to find out something the market hasn’t twigged” company. Having arrived from an intense office environment at Schroder’s, he was given the space to work on his evolving theories about small cap stocks and intellectual capital. The resulting piece of work, The Cross Report, was published in January 1998.

Cross is taking the opportunity afforded by its tenth anniversary to review the performance of the fund and look back at its highlights and inevitable, if less frequent, patches of turbulence. The theory will not change, however. “I’m not a day trader type,” he says. “I buy businesses on the strength of their intellectual capital and equity ownership.

“What is intellectual capital? I’m looking for these things. Strong repeat income. Intangible assets such as brands, culture and procedures. A strong distribution network. And strong customer relations.” The first qualification is that directors must own at least 3 per cent of the stock.

In common with other Liontrust managers, Cross is immune to the viruses and manias that sweep through the market. Sexy sectors and charismatic CEOs don’t bring him out in a hot flush. “I like to find out something the market hasn’t twigged,” he says. “I think I’m good at identifying what makes a business model sustainable and identifying good management.
That’s a much more targeted discipline than looking at sectors and trends. And I’m cynical about the overblown PR that surrounds some CEOs.”

"In the First Opportunities Fund I am interested in what I call 'high conviction' stocks. It's a concentrated portfolio of 40-50 companies from the FTSE All-Share and the smaller companies indices. The fund is biased towards smaller companies, where there are a greater number of investment opportunities that fit with the investment philosophy. The categories of companies I invest in have worked well together; the blend has proved an important factor in generating strong returns for the Fund. They combine 'value' (my undervalued intellectual capital companies) with 'growth' (my core intellectual capital companies). Performance has come equally from both groups, but not necessarily at the same time." What of 2008? "While the Fund benefited from being underweight in areas such as real estate and retailing in 2007, it will have no trouble in increasing its cyclical exposure when the time is right. I am currently building a list of ideas right across the market capitalisation spectrum. Although a large number of shares look very cheap and have experienced significant falls, I believe it is too early to buy into them. "I expect the newsflow, particularly from sectors such as banking, real estate, recruitment and retailing, to worsen. Share prices, particularly in consumer-facing areas, will continue to be under pressure. Analysts are slow to adjust their profit forecasts: current headline price to earnings ratios, for many companies, are too optimistic and forecast dividends for the most operationally geared businesses should not be taken for granted. As in 2002 with the technology and media companies, I will be looking for stability of earnings before aggressively adding to my cyclical exposure to capitalise on any upswing."

He also has the other essential Liontrust virtue of holding one’s nerve. He is especially called on to show that resilience at rocky times such as these. Small caps are the fingers and toes of the market – they feel the chill first and most intensely when it comes. Cross shrugs. “There may be problems in short-term markets but they don’t influence long-term performance. You don’t get stewed up about day-to-day issues.”

Getting “stewed up”, and the need to avoid that uncomfortable condition, is something of an obsession with Cross. “You go through tough times – everything is measured. You have to put it into perspective. Liontrust has delivered over time. I’ve done ten years and there have been good, bad and indifferent times. I’m a better fund manager as a result. I approach things on an even keel. Jeremy and Bill have had difficult years too. We all feel stewed up when that happens. But getting stewed up doesn’t help you in the long term. It’s more likely to make your decisions suspect.”