According to FE Analytics, over 10 years he has returned 303.6 per cent while his peer group composite has made just 166.50 per cent.
Performance of manager vs peer group over 10-yrs
Source: FE Analytics
Cross (pictured) has won acclaim for his stewardship of the five crown-rated Liontrust Special Situations fund, which he has run since 2005 with fellow FE Alpha Manager Julian Fosh.
The £550.1m fund has recorded top-quartile performance over one, three and five years. It has also been less volatile than the IMA UK All Companies sector over these periods. The fund is the second-best performer in the sector over five years, behind FE Alpha Manager Mark Slater’s MFM Slater Growth fund.
Since launch in 2005, Liontrust Special Situations has returned 142.7 per cent, compared with 35.47 per cent from the sector and 41.51 per cent from the FTSE All Share index.
Cross also heads up two other portfolios at Liontrust with Julian Fosh: Liontrust UK Growth and Liontrust UK Smaller Companies.
Cross and Fosh began running the £194.5m Liontrust UK Growth fund in early 2009, although it was launched back in 1993.
In an exclusive interview, Cross told FE Trustnet that he and Fosh completely overhauled the five crown-rated fund's investment strategy when they took charge.
"We kept some of the huge names that the fund already held so some of the portfolio stayed the same, however we added a lot of our own ideas," he said.
"There was a relatively big overhaul and Julian and I wanted to put our own stamp on it."
Since Cross and Fosh began running Liontrust UK Growth, it has returned 100.46 per cent, compared with 73.42 per cent from its FTSE All Share benchmark and 71.93 per cent from its sector.
Performance of fund vs sector and index since March 2009
Source: FE Analytics
Cross says there are two major differences between the Liontrust Special Situations and the UK Growth funds.
"The first difference is the proportion of smaller companies in the funds' holdings," he said.
"In the Special Situations fund, we look to hold between 20 to 30 per cent in small caps. In the UK Growth fund, we look to hold anywhere up to 10 per cent in smaller companies; currently the fund's exposure to the sector is 7 per cent."
"The other area is the benchmark weightings of the funds. In the growth fund, we have unit holdings of 2 per cent and then we add the average weightings of the IMA UK All Companies sector on top of that, whereas the Special Situations fund has more of a free rein."
According to FE Analytics, both the funds own giant multi-nationals Royal Dutch Shell, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca in their top-10 holdings.
The portfolio Cross has been running the longest is the £118m Liontrust UK Smaller Companies fund, which he has managed since its launch in 1998.
The small cap fund has registered top-quartile performance over one, three, five and 10 years.
Over five years, it is the second-best performer in the IMA UK Smaller Companies sector, returning 65.37 per cent while the sector has made 16.15 per cent and the FTSE Small Cap ex IT index has lost 8.03 per cent.
Performance of fund vs sector and benchmark over 5-yrs
Source: FE Analytics
Liontrust UK Smaller Companies has a portfolio of 47 holdings and its largest weighting by market capitalisation is to the FTSE AIM.
Cross says that he and Fosh split their time evenly between the three funds.
"I think between myself and Julian it is very equal, all the funds are of equal importance," he explained.
"I tend to cover the day-to-day news flows of the smaller companies. However, we both have the same emphasis at stock levels. We always have a bottom-up approach to the companies we invest in and we don’t concentrate on the macro environment."