• Bottom-up, research driven investment process
• Team-driven, sector-neutral approach
• Explicit focus on change to identify opportunities
• Adherence to risk controls

Investment Process
We believe that the best investment opportunities are created through change. We gain a solid understanding of underlying changes in an organization through fundamental analysis, an integral part of our selection process. Portfolio managers seek improvements in fundamentals that are both meaningful and sustainable and evaluate each potential investment in light of the economic, social and political environment.

A bottom-up quantitative model is a productive starting point to finding potentially attractive investments and is one resource utilized to identify buy candidates in our Large Cap Value Equity strategy. We use a multi-factor model that ranks a universe of the 1,500 largest US companies utilizing fundamental valuation and momentum measures. We focus on stocks over $1 billion in market capitalization with the most attractive rankings, based on the strength of these fundamentals.

Potential investments may also be identified by a member of our value team through their in-depth knowledge of an industry and trends within a followed sector. Our proprietary price target model tracks price and earnings data on the more closely followed 700 companies within our universe, and serves as another source of examining potentially undervalued stocks.

Our most effective means for gaining insight into value stocks is our team structure. Portfolio managers on our value team average 20 years of investment experience. Each manager focuses on research and identifying opportunities within their covered sectors while also managing the portfolio as a team from a broader perspective.

Our sell discipline is driven by both quantitative and qualitative factors. Our value team will sell a company if the fundamentals and/or management fail to improve as we anticipate, or if there is a substantial deterioration in the fundamentals or overall integrity of the company. Quantitatively, a sale is triggered if a company’s valuation becomes unattractive. We may also sell a holding if our investment process points to better alternative investment opportunities.