The equity committee must have a majority agreement on investment decisions before any changes are made to the Large Cap Growth Equity strategy. Investment ideas are developed from our working universe, which are the result of a series of computer screens applied against a universe of over 6,300 companies. These recommendations are presented to the equity committee, which determine what equities our organization will buy or sell. Once they reach a decision on the recommendation, individual portfolio managers implement the changes in the various portfolios they manage. We look to buy stocks which have passed our screens, been reviewed by our research team, and are expected to have strong EPS growth over the next 2 years.
Portfolio management is highly collaborative.
Each portfolio is assigned a primary portfolio manager with ultimate responsibility for buy and sell actions. The primary manager is supported by a team of senior and associate portfolio managers to assure continuity in management of accounts. There is continual interaction between portfolio managers and research analysts. A successful investment strategy must curb the human tendency to overreact to events, whether they are positive or negative. We utilize attribution analysis to understand the nature of performance variance versus our benchmark.