The Fund seeks to achieve its objective by investing in a broad range of shares from companies in emerging markets (developing countries) excluding China, or from companies which generate a significant amount of their business from emerging market countries.
The Investment Manager’s investment approach focuses primarily on fundamental bottom-up stock selection with top-down macro-economic research and analysis.
The Investment Manager seeks to identify growth opportunities by looking at global growth expectations, demand drivers, supply drivers (including those which impact changes in supply), macroeconomic trends (such as social demographic trends, monetary and fiscal policy, government models, and competitiveness) and factors impacting company valuations to establish a dynamic understanding of the economic backdrop to the investment universe. The Investment Manager’s research efforts are directed towards detailed analysis of a company’s specific strategic position and opportunities within its industry with a view to establishing its potential for future Economic Value Add (“EVA”). The Investment Manager looks to identify companies with the capability to generate a high, and growing level, of EVA in the future (identified over the medium to long term investment horizon). Having established a company’s opportunity for growth, its competitive position and its potential to create EVA, the Investment Manager uses a proprietary valuation model to identify its expected level of future EVA creation and its expected market value in relation to its current price. The Investment Manager’s process incorporates quantitive and qualitative analysis of environmental, societal and governance policies, performance, practices and impacts. The Investment Manager uses quantitive analysis (exclusionary screening) to avoid companies involved in activities deemed unacceptable or controversial from an environmental, societal and governance perspective, and uses qualitative methods (external research and internal analysis) to identify companies which can demonstrate continual improvement from an environmental, societal and governance perspective.
