What do the boxes mean?

The style box represents the fund's investment objective and is not reflective of the historical or current holdings of the portfolio.

International Equity

International Equity Strategy

The strategy seeks to provide long-term capital appreciation by investing primarily in the common stocks and other equity securities of foreign companies that managers believe have the best combination of relative value and earnings growth.

What are the principles that have enabled the strategy to be successful?

Focus on earnings growth and relative valuation — in regions and sectors where companies have similar valuations, the process seeks those companies with the highest earnings growth. In areas where earnings growth is similar, the process seeks the companies with the best relative valuation.

Sector — specific models for each region – proprietary multi-factor sector models are tailored to each region, as history shows that characteristics of successful companies in a particular sector have often varied across regions. For example, successful Financial Services companies in Europe and Japan could have very different balance sheet structures and financial ratios.

Region neutral — the goal is to build a diversified portfolio of the strongest companies within each region, and have region allocations that are similar to the benchmark. Since currency has often been a major component of total return, this approach is designed to diversify the portfolio away from short term currency fluctuations which are difficult to predict.

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