Montanaro European Smaller Companies (MTE)

MTE is managed by George Cooke at Montanaro Asset Management and focuses on delivering capital growth through investments in high-quality, niche smaller companies across continental Europe. The company is held in a number of portfolios and aims to identify well-managed businesses with strong balance sheets, sustainable profitability, and clear structural growth opportunities. Its approach deliberately avoids the economic cycle, choosing instead to invest in businesses capable of growing irrespective of broader macroeconomic conditions. With a deeply experienced and multilingual investment team, Montanaro leverages bottom- up research and regular site visits to uncover under-researched gems. In the interview, George elaborates on the trust’s distinctive bottom-up approach that filters for enduring quality and growth, and the importance of structural growth over cyclical trends; how the scale of its analyst team gives it an edge in conducting due diligence on investments employing frameworks such as Porter’s Five Forces to assess competitive moats and business longevity; how the trust's long-term outlook, emphasis on owner-operators, and willingness to hold positions for a decade or more underpins its strategy; and how the trust’s portfolio is skewed toward industrials and specialist manufacturers, benefiting from Europe’s dense ecosystem of niche players.