Our Middle East strategy is designed for clients wishing to capitalize on our investment team's stock picking ability in undiscovered stock markets within the Middle East. This strategy offers investors a pure exposure to stocks in the less discovered Middle East countries which are typically outside most global emerging markets’ portfolios. The investment team looks for companies, within these countries, that are undervalued relative to their long-term growth prospects. Due to the focus on stock picking and on markets outside global indices, benchmark risk is high in this strategy.

In this strategy:

• Stock selection takes precedence over country allocation.



• The Portfolio Manager is responsible for country and stock allocation for this strategy. The Portfolio Manager, with the help of an Analyst and an external Consultant, selects stocks for the portfolio.



• The investment team selects stocks from the bottom-up. The stock selection process is rigorous, systematic and value-oriented. We conduct numerous company visits throughout the region and utilize our proprietary database and earnings forecasts to compare industries and stocks. Given the lack of sell-side research in these undiscovered markets, the dependence on travel and in house research is particularly high.



• The final investment decision is made by the Portfolio Manager. The top ten holdings require Investment Committee review and approval, and any stock which is also held directly in a Global Active portfolio must go through our normal Investment Committee review process.



• Frontier markets are the focus of this investment universe in order to capitalize on market inefficiencies.