Leon Howard-Spink is boyishly enthusiastic about his job. “Go on, test me on anything in the portfolio,” he says, brandishing the list of 55 companies held in the fund he manages, Jupiter's £150m European Special Situations Fund. “I can explain the reasons why I own each company.”

Rejecting the “easy option” of describing one of his top 10 holdings, Howard-Spink then launches into a detailed, and surprisingly interesting, exposé of a 2 per cent holding, an Irish company called Kingspan which makes composite insulated panels for house construction.

Howard-Spink has some justification for his enthusiasm. Having joined Jupiter straight after graduating from Edinburgh University with a politics degree, and at 31, he has an enviable performance record. Since February 1999 the fund has outperformed its index (the FTSE World Europe ex UK) by 139 per cent, and since launch is first in its sector. Managing the fund comes with some perks. “I'm going to Switzerland next week to see companies that are sometimes a little bit more difficult to see in London like Lindt, the chocolate maker,” Howard-Spink says. “It should be fun going round the chocolate factory.”

Sweets aside, Howard-Spink firmly believes that detailed knowledge of the companies he invests in is the key driver of performance.

He meets with around 240 different companies every year, mainly as they come through Jupiter's swish offices at, London's Hyde Park Corner.

“I try to focus on what's happening today and in the recent past rather than on macro issues like whether [German chancellor Gerhard] Schroder is going to reform labour laws,” he says. “In Europe that means things like growth in the ophthalmic market being driven by an ageing population and by technology.”

This type of investment theme has led Howard-Spink to hold Essilor, a French company with a third of the global market share for making spectacle lenses, as well as a German spectacles retailer, the largest in Europe.

He likes niche market leaders like these. “You can charge that little bit more on prices, and you can make that little bit of extra margin faster than your competitors.

“Because of that, you can spend a little bit more on R&D and come up with a new product, so then your brand becomes even more valuable.”

Howard-Spink believes that choosing companies with different growth drivers is one of the ways he controls risk effectively within the portofolio.

“One of the reasons why we do better than our peer group is that they think about diversification just in terms of country and sector. I try to think in terms of growth drivers you might have two companies in the same sector of the market that have completely different growth drivers.”

Howard-Spink defends his emphasis on “bottom-up” company analysis rather than top-down macro analysis.

“What we try to do is focus on a repeatable skill, which is done by meeting many different companies, with the CEOs and CFOs talking about the strategy, why they can sell more, how they can protect the price of their goods or services against competitive threats, what kind of profit margins they can make in the future.

“Finding companies and splitting out the ones that you think have good medium-term prospects and then putting a value on that is something that you can do, and you can do it again and again.”

Howard-Spink says he tries not to get too obsessed with any one company and has no target holding period for stocks.

“I've had stocks where I've met the management, I've done the valuations, I've made my decisions, I've invested in it and then circumstances have changed even as little as two months later results come out, for example, or they make an acquisition I wasn't expecting. One of the most common reasons I'll sell is because I've got something wrong, I've misunderstood something.”

He uses an expression taken from American football to describe the benefits of his investment style. “I don't think if you've known a company for a long time that it makes you more afraid to sell. In fact, it means you avoid being ‘head-faked'. Share prices can head-fake you if you don't understand why you're in a company and the share price falls a long way.

“If you don't understand exactly why you're in it you won't know whether it's a great buying opportunity or whether you've just got to cut your losses.”

And he is keen to argue that this investment philosophy is an effective way of managing risk. He does not feel constrained by the index, and is critical of fund managers who are.

“Lots of fund managers will say, 'which of the big index stocks do I like? I prefer Nestlé to Unilever, but I will still own both of them.' Why do you own the one you don't like? The only reason is to protect your back.”

Protecting his back is something which keeps Howard-Spink awake at night.

“Why I think my fund has done very well is because we have this individual responsibility.

“If European special situations does well I'm the one that gets the congratulations, and if it does badly I'm the one who's depressed and can't sleep at night.”

The fund's excellent performance does not mean that an investor would not have lost money during the bear market and Howard-Spink concedes that, for retail investors, the search for absolute return has become increasingly important.

But he is not tempted by the life of an absolute-return chaser, like a hedge fund manager. “When you're a hedge fund manager you're obsessed with not having any monthly “drawdowns”, what normal people would call losses.

“Every month you have to catch every single little move in the market, it just means you have less time for real classic investment.”

And he enjoys the European nature of his job.

“We've got such a big choice of companies and industries and world leaders. If I want to own a food retailer I've got the choice of dozens and dozens of them. In the UK you can only chop and change between three or four.”

But travelling in Europe with Howard-Spink sounds somewhat of a chore.

“I know I can be incredibly boring,” he says ruefully. “My poor girlfriend complains because when I'm in the aeroplane, since I own a company which makes aeroplane seats, I'm sitting there wondering who made them, or I'm looking at the revolving doors we're going through which are made by a Swiss company I've met before.”