Mark B. Babka

Amundi US selects investments from a wide range of asset classes and employs a variety of styles in managing client assets. Regarding equity securities, the firm employs fundamental and quantitative research to their portfolio management approach. With respect to fixed income securities, their investment professionals consistently apply well established means of identifying potentially rewarding securities. Whether applying top-down analysis that leads to selection of government bonds, or the bottom-up approach that ends with corporate bonds being selected, the investment management team's goal is portfolio construction that matches product objectives and supports investors’ goals.

The firm's portfolio managers, research specialists and traders are organized into teams by asset class. SCM provides several different investment approaches to both its international and domestic equity portfolios. For its capital appreciation equity management, the firm emphasizes current economic environment and secular themes. In particular, long-term economic trends, Federal Reserve policy and market liquidity serve as a macroeconomic backdrop to the overall direction of the markets. For equity stock selection, disciplined, fundamental research with emphasis on the following characteristics are practiced: strong fundamentals, accelerating earnings and sales, accelerating return on equity, expanding market share, low cost producers, quality management and positive earnings surprises. Its bottom-up security analysis emphasizes management, cash flow, earnings growth, balance sheet strength, competitive position, discounted cash flow and relative p/e ratio.

Eagle Boston Investment Management is a small-cap core manager with a value bias. They seek to build portfolios consisting of the stocks of high quality growth and value companies that have the potential to improve in growth and profitability beyond the market's current expectations that are trading at a discount to their intrinsic or private market values. The firm uses proprietary, bottom-up, fundamental research to identify and invest in a limited number of small- and medium-sized companies that meet certain business and valuation criteria. Eagle Boston's comprehensive due diligence process typically includes company and competitor visits and the development of proprietary analysis and models to value their holdings. The firm's investment approach is designed to create an opportunity for strong investment returns while also reducing downside risk. Eagle Boston seeks to invest in companies that have 3 to 4 times the upside growth potential compared to their downside risk. They look for companies operating in industries with favorable supply/demand dynamics. They also look for companies in industries with a competitive environment that allows for attractive returns on capital. Companies should have clean balance sheets, neutral-to-positive free cash flow and stable-to-improving margins, returns and earnings.

Functions as a College/University

40/86 primarily invests client’s assets in multiple classes of fixed income securities and investments. The firm builds each portfolio from the bottom-up by selecting undervalued securities through proprietary, independent research. They place an emphasis on relative value, looking for opportunities where the market price of a security does not appropriately reflect its intrinsic value. The objective is to invest in those securities that the firm believes are undervalued and then sell them when they become fully valued in the market. 40/86 also perform a top-down asset allocation and performance attribution analysis. The firm’s portfolio managers have decision-making authority over investment decisions.

Aristotle Boston offers Small-Cap Equity and Small/Mid-Cap Equity investment strategies that aim to maximize long-term returns with great emphasis placed on capital appreciation and relatively little emphasis on current income. The strategies are well diversified by sector. The firm uses a fundamental, bottom-up approach to security selection.