Credit Suisse Small and Mid Cap Alpha Long/Short

The Credit Suisse Small and Mid Cap Alpha Long/Short strategy has been live since 2007, with the UCITS version launched in 2010. The strategy aims to generate strong absolute returns across market cycles by exploiting inefficiencies in the European small and mid-caps space (with a bias towards German speaking countries). The portfolio is co-managed by Felix Mayer (lead PM, covering German speaking countries), Jan Berg (Benelux, UK and the Nordics) and Gianfranco Lafigliola (Southern Europe) who employ a fundamentally driven bottom-up investment approach. Ideas are largely sourced ‘on the ground’ with the PMs having over 350 company meetings per year, seeking to understand the quality of the management teams and of the business to find the most innovative small and mid caps companies of the future. These have generally GARP characteristics and low leverage on their balance sheets (low debt, low fixed costs). The short book combines single stock ideas (typically representing 50% of the gross short exposure) with Index Futures and Option positions to give the strategy greater flexibility in managing the overall fund’s net market exposure during times of market stress (net exposure is typically adjusted in a countercyclical fashion, ranging from 30-60%).