Anthony Cross’s grasp of facts and figures and the speed with which he rattles them off is impressive, and has earned him the nickname Gatling Gun Cross from his colleagues.

Cross runs two of Liontrust’s funds – the Intellectual Capital Trust, which was launched
in 1998 and is Cross’s baby, and the First Opportunities Fund, which was added to the
stable in 2005. The two funds have assets under management of £120m and £13m respectively.

Cross started as an analyst with Schroders in 1990, joining their smaller companies team in 1994. Since then he has developed his own very distinctive investment management style, specialising in tracking down companies with undervalued intellectual property.

“At Schroders we had up to £2bn in UK small cap companies and it was difficult back then to have an investment philosophy because of the sheer amount of money we were trying to invest,” he says.

In 1997, Cross joined Nigel Legge and Jeremy Lang, two of the founders of Liontrust. “Liontrust has always had a clear idea of types of business to invest in; I had to sit down for three months and write my investment report, analysing what seemed important in successful companies,”
Cross explains.

“These companies have two important characteristics. The
first is that they are rich in Intellectual Capital. This was a new
concept back in the mid-Nineties. Today it is quite accepted.
It describes those people-based assets that you find within
some companies – such as repeat business, customer
relationships, brand loyalty, databases, distribution networks,
procedures and business culture. These assets have become extremely important within businesses because they are often very difficult for competitors to copy.”

He uses the example of one of his favourite companies, Renishaw, saying: “The reasons why this manufacturer of very precise measurement probes has been successful is because it has a massive strength in intellectual property.

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