Small Cap Awards 2022 – Meet the nominees for UK Smaller Companies Fund Manager of the Year

The Small Cap Awards celebrate the best in UK businesses with market capitalisation of below £200 million. The awards will be presented in London on the 30th June with a panel of market experts picking out the winners. Find out more about the awards, the event and the panel at the Small Cap Awards 2022 website. The awards are made possible through the support of our sponsors.

A selection of the nominees for Transaction of the Year are as follows:

LionTrust UK Microcap Fund

Liontrust is a specialist asset manager that takes pride in having a distinct culture and approach to running money. The company launched in 1995 and was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1999. We are an independent business with no corporate parent, our head office is on the Strand in London and we have offices in Edinburgh and Luxembourg. Our purpose is to have a positive impact on our investors, stakeholders and society. Our approach to investment management is:

• We believe investment processes are key to long-term performance and effective risk control. Our fund managers are truly active in applying their investment processes.
• There is no house view – our fund managers have the freedom to manage their portfolios according to their own investment processes and market views without being distracted by other day-to-day aspects of running a fund management company.
• Staying true to their documented investment processes helps to create an in-built risk control for our fund managers, especially in more challenging environments, by preventing them from investing in companies and funds for the wrong reasons.
• Documenting an investment process means investors know exactly how each team manages their money.
• Liontrust ensures that appropriate and prudent levels of risk are taken to meet the investment objectives and policies of all our funds.

Over the long term – more than 20 years in the case of our Economic Advantage and Sustainable Investment teams – the consistent application of the rigorous Liontrust investment processes to our funds has delivered strong performance for investors.

Over the financial year, Liontrust generated net inflows of £2.5 billion. The strength of our sales is demonstrated by the fact that over the calendar year of 2021, Liontrust had the second highest net retail sales in the UK and the fifth highest gross retail sales, according to the Pridham Report.

As well as the quality of Liontrust’s investment capability, these sales have been driven by the breadth of our client base, strong relationships and client service, great communications and distinct brand.

Clients demanding a more sustainable outcome from their investments continued to drive flows into our Sustainable Future funds. Both professional intermediaries and retail investors continue to identify Liontrust as the best asset manager for Sustainable Investment, according to research carried out for Liontrust by Research in Finance in December 2021.

In 2021, Liontrust was named Asset Manager of the Year at the Financial News Awards, the Best Fund Group at the Shares Awards and Global Group of the Year at the Investment Week Fund Manager of the Year Awards.

The acquisition of Majedie Asset Management, which completed on 1 April 2022, has continued our diversification and expansion, both through distribution to institutional investors and investment capability.

Liontrust is investing in digital marketing to enhance further the service we provide and the engagement we achieve with clients and investors, including through the launch of our new website at the end of March featuring distinct customer journeys and personalisation.

TB Whitman UK Small Cap Growth Fund

Whitman is a wholly independent company, privately owned by the employees and a small number of experienced investors. As equity owners in our business and considerable investors in our own investment strategies, we are inherently aligned to our clients. London based with 8 full time employees, and three solely dedicated to smaller company investment. As a smaller firm with considerable experience, we believe we can offer clients an investment led proposition, using our size as a distinct advantage.

CFP Castlefield B.E.S.T Sustainable UK Smaller Companies Fund

Castlefield is an employee-owned, Manchester-based investment and financial services group, specialising in responsible ESG investing.

One thing we share as co-owners of Castlefield is the fundamental belief that we can achieve competitive, long-term financial returns for our clients, by investing in a values-based way, alongside making a positive difference to the world around us; if you like, the returns we deliver extend well beyond the financial.

Over more than two decades of investing, we’ve delivered competitive, values-based returns through an approach which is as rigorous as it is genuine.

Our sustainable range includes single strategy funds investing in the UK and Europe, platform models, multi asset funds, a discretionary management service and an AIM portfolio service. To us, responsible investing isn’t simply a product or bolt-on service – it’s all that we do and is integral to everything we stand for.

We’ve carried this belief and these values right through to the way in which we’ve built and run our firm; together as its co-owners, with our own corporate sustainability very much in mind.

That’s why we’re known as the thoughtful investor ®.

About the CFP Castlefield Sustainable UK Smaller Companies Fund

The CFP Castlefield Sustainable UK Smaller Companies Fund seeks to harness the growth potential of sustainable UK smaller companies over the long term. In doing this, it aims to achieve capital appreciation over a period in excess of five years from a portfolio of UK listed or AIM quoted smaller companies, above the average of its peers.

Key characteristics of the Fund include:

• High conviction – identified best ideas in a portfolio of 30-50 sustainable UK smaller companies in the bottom 10% of market capitalisation, held for the long term
• Fundamental research – a bottom-up approach seeking to identify growing companies with quality characteristics and solving challenges of sustainability, whilst investing at reasonable prices
• Integrated responsible investment process – consideration of non-financial ESG factors alongside traditional financial analysis within the selection of sustainable investments, as well as a sector-leading Voting and Engagement Policy
• Nimble to invest in interesting opportunities with sizeable capacity within the structure to appeal to the long-term investor
• We believe the Fund to be highly differentiated versus both the index and peer group in applying our sustainable investing approach to a portfolio of genuinely smaller UK companies

The past twelve months have been a particularly strong period for Castlefield, with strong growth, new client acquisitions and several award nominations. This is due to a number of factors, including a greater investment in our people, systems and processes, the commitment and hard work of the 60+ co-owners, along with an intense focus on client satisfaction.