The universe of small-cap  managers, even in the US, is not  very large. Siguler Guff tracks about  600 such managers but believes  that there are probably only about  200 which are of institutional  investment grade. People tend  to come and go at the small end,  which makes tracking them difficult  too.  Like Australia, the US economy  is dominated by small-to-mediumsized  businesses. Companies with  annual sales of between $5 million  and $100 million make up about  95 per cent of all US companies.  And they are big employers.  Interestingly, they are also good  employers when times are tough.  George Siguler says that the  170 companies in his firm’s $6  billion portfolio employed an  aggregate of 45,000 people at  the start of the recession. They  employed 54,000 people a year  later.  Australian super funds, for  their part, have liked the small-cap  strategy. Australian-sourced funds  made up about 20 per cent of the  Siguler Guff small-cap’s first raising  in 2006-2007.