Increasingly, there is little correlation between a company’s activities and prospects on the one hand, and its country of listing on the other. I focus on each company’s specific opportunities and how those companies can avoid the macro problems of the eurozone. Fortunately, there are plenty of companies that meet our criteria.

The three reasons why European companies are becoming global are: emerging markets have spurred new demand, European companies have the trading heritage to take advantage, and technology together with liberalisation, make these overseas markets more accessible than before.

So, in my view there is the opportunity, the desire and the means. This is reflected in European companies’ profitability, which has remained impressive. For ’winning’ business models, the fact that they are European-based is no bar to succeeding in the wider world.

The question is could this trend reverses? Wealth creation is driven by productivity gains, which in turn are driven by technological progress and liberalisation. There is still a long way to go towards reaping the full benefits of present technology and while liberalisation continues, it will be an important factor underpinning world economic growth. Of course, protectionism is the big threat. But I don’t see this as getting any worse in the near term and I think it is much harder for governments to pursue protectionist policies in the age of digital technology. So I believe that the ’global’ opportunity for European companies is well established and likely to persist.

But surely not all companies can benefit from this trend. To benefit from this global opportunity companies must, in my view, meet two criteria: they must have something 'special' and world-beating, to offer; and they must be able to 'go global' easily.

Europe has many companies which excel and can truly be described as world beaters in their fields. But they must also be flexible and not solely dependent on Europe. For that reason I tend to favour companies with plenty of Intellectual Property that can be easily exported over those companies that are capital intensive and find it much harder to move their assets. I try to pick companies that have the flexibility both to improve their cost base by taking global opportunities and that can tap into new, growing demand around the world.