Montanaro UK Smaller Companies aims to achieve capital appreciation through investing in small quoted companies listed on the London Stock Exchange or traded on AIM and to outperform its benchmark, the Numis Smaller Companies Index (excluding investment companies). The focus is on capital growth.
Montanaro Asset Management Limited (MAML), the trust’s alternative investment fund manager (AIFM), has one of the largest teams in Europe focused on researching and investing in quoted small and mid-cap companies. At the end of February 2020, the team was 30-strong all together, including an investment team of 12. The team is multi-lingual and multi-national (10 countries in all). All but two of the fund managers also have research responsibilities. At the end of December 2019, MAML had assets under management (AUM) of over £2.5bn. Charles owns 100% of the business, but staff have options over about half of that.
We have written a note that explains in some detail how the trust works – Reputation restored – looks at the improvement in the trust’s performance after Charles Montanaro took on responsibility for the portfolio once again and the various shareholder-friendly initiatives undertaken to increase the appeal of the trust.