William H. Thomas

Baring North America's (BNA) investment approach focuses on identifying favorable earnings surprise and valuation characteristics through fundamental research. They seek companies and markets whose attractive growth prospects are not fully reflected in their prices. The firm's core equity portfolios are diversified large-cap portfolios that typically offer above market growth characteristics at or at a reasonable premium to market valuations. BNA's growth criteria embrace companies delivering growth in earnings per share in the top 60% of their universes. The firm's systematic equity investment process embraces hands-on fundamental stock research and analysis to generate proprietary earnings forecasts and relative valuation targets and quantitative analysis and screening to focus their research and generate buy and sell ideas. BNA's investment teams use a common framework and template for equity research, which focuses on growth, management, value creation and valuation criteria. Their regional equity teams are responsible for portfolio strategy and stock selection for specialist regional equity portfolios as well as the regional portion of their global and multi-asset mandates. The asset allocation team is responsible for regional/country strategy in their global and multi-asset portfolios and for sector policy at the global and multi-asset mandate level. The output of their fundamental and quantitative research is used to rank each stock and to shape buy and sell decisions. Teams review stocks continuously following company meetings and announcements. BNA's fixed-income processes are characterized by fundamental research and disciplined portfolio construction techniques. They also use technical analysis, particularly in currency allocation research. The firm's credit research leverages off the equity research capabilities of the firm. They invest in bonds issued by governments, agencies, corporates as well as emerging market sovereign, mortgages and asset-backed securities. BNA includes bonds across the rating spectrum from Aaa to Caa, according to the risk tolerance and guidelines of their clients.