Sub-Advisors

abrdn Investments Limited with its affiliates (“abrdn”) seeks to provide world-class investment expertise to its global client base across the breadth of markets and asset classes. The firm’s full range of investment solutions spans fixed income, equities, multi-asset, liquidity, real estate and private markets. With more than two decades of emerging market debt investment experience, abrdn has built a well-resourced, experienced and stable emerging markets debt investment team with offices in London, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Shanghai. The team’s investment philosophy is based on intensive fundamental research with expertise spanning the entire market, from hard and local currency issues to corporate debt.

AHL is a quantitative investment business at Man Group plc (“Man”), a global, independent asset manager dedicated to alternative and long-only investing. AHL’s trading strategy is quantitative and 100% systematic. The approach is primarily directional, with systems sampling thousands of pieces of market data daily to identify and profit from opportunities across a broad range of sectors, including currencies, bonds, stocks, energies, interest rates, metals and agriculturals. AHL has a global footprint with employees in New York, London, Oxford, Pfaeffikon and Hong Kong. Additionally, AHL continues to be an academically focused firm, employing more than 90 researchers on staff with approximately half holding Ph.D. degrees.

American Beacon has more than 30 years of investment management experience. We offer a variety of products and investment advisory services to numerous institutional and retail clients, including mutual funds, corporate cash management and separate account management. Clients include defined benefit plans, defined contribution plans, foundations, endowments, corporations, financial planners and other institutional investors.

American Century Investments is a leading global asset manager focused on delivering investment results and building long-term client relationships while supporting research that can improve human health and save lives. Founded in 1958, the firm’s employees serve financial professionals, institutions, corporations and individual investors from offices in New York; Los Angeles; London; Hong Kong; Frankfurt; Sydney; Mountain View, Calif.; and Kansas City, Mo. Delivering investment results to clients enables American Century Investments to distribute more than 40% of its dividends to its primary owner, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, a 550-person, non-profit basic biomedical research organization. The Institute has received approximately $1.6 billion in dividend payments from American Century Investments since 2000.

ARK Investment Management LLC is a federally registered investment adviser and privately held investment firm. Specializing in thematic investing in disruptive innovation, the firm is rooted in over 40 years of experience in identifying and investing in innovations that should change the way the world works. Through its open research process, ARK identifies companies that it believes are leading and benefiting from cross-sector innovations such as robotics, energy storage, multiomic sequencing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology. ARK’s investment strategies include Autonomous Technology and Robotics, Next Generation Internet, Genomic Revolution, Fintech Innovation, Space Exploration & Innovation, 3D Printing, Israel Innovative Technology, the overall ARK Disruptive Innovation Strategy, and the ARK Venture Fund.

Barrow Hanley uses a value-oriented investment strategy to identify companies across all market capitalizations that they believe are undervalued and temporarily out of favor. Their portfolios consistently reflect these three traditional value characteristics: low price-to-earnings ratio, low price-to-book value ratio and high dividend yield. Barrow Hanley’s approach to the equity markets is based on their underlying philosophy that the inefficiencies in the market can be exploited through adherence to a value-oriented process dedicated to the selection of securities on a bottom-up basis. In fixed income, Barrow Hanley defines value as temporarily mispriced securities with yield-to-maturity advantages over Treasury bonds of comparable maturity. They identify each opportunity from the bottom up, building a duration-neutral portfolio designed to “out-yield” the market. In this way, Barrow Hanley seeks to achieve higher total returns for their fixed-income clients with below-benchmark volatility.

Brandywine Global believes in the power of value investing. Acting with conviction and discipline, the firm looks beyond short-term, conventional thinking to boldly pursue long-term value for clients. Where others see risk, they see potential. Since 1986, Brandywine Global has provided clients with investment insights and a range of differentiated fixed-income, equity and alternative solutions. The firm’s unique culture of debate encourages ideas, respects diverse viewpoints and invites candid discussion. By challenging one another and conventional thinking, they believe they make better investment decisions and create value for their clients. Applying its global experience, the firm uses macroeconomic, country and currency perspectives in many of its portfolios to determine sector allocation and issue selection, and to add alpha over the long run while minimizing downside surprises. Brandywine Global, as an independent affiliate of Legg Mason, offers the advantages of an investment boutique backed by the resources and infrastructure of one of the world’s leading asset managers. With headquarters in Philadelphia and offices in London, Singapore, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal, the firm is committed to bringing value to all its relationships.

Causeway is an employee-owned, international and global equity investment management firm that began operations in June 2001. Causeway specializes in managing international and global value equities, using a bottom-up approach and value-oriented criteria backed by fundamental research of international stocks in developed markets. Their clients include corporate, public and Taft-Hartley pension plans, mutual funds, endowments, foundations, corporations and individuals.

DePrince, Race & Zollo, Inc., a professional investment advisory firm founded in 1995, is based in Winter Park, Florida. DRZ is 100% employee owned and takes pride in the long-term continuity of their team. The firm’s mission is to provide superior performance and client service while serving the institutional marketplace. DRZ’s competitive strengths include a well-defined buy/sell discipline, a focus on Value methodology and an attentiveness toward client-conscious asset caps on all strategies.

DoubleLine is a privately owned, employee-controlled asset management business founded by Jeffrey Gundlach and 45 colleagues in 2009 to offer investment management services with a cardinal mandate: to help deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns to clients. The firm offers product solutions across asset classes, including Securitized Debt, Multi-Sector Fixed Income, Floating-Rate Income, Emerging Markets Fixed Income, Global Developed Credit, Infrastructure Income, Equities and Commodities. The firm’s portfolio managers have worked together for nearly two decades, employing a disciplined and time-tested process of credit underwriting and active management.

Garcia Hamilton & Associates, LP, based in Houston, Texas, manages high-quality, fixed-income assets for institutional investors. Founded in 1988, the firm’s diversified client base includes public funds, jointly trusteed plans, endowments and corporations. The firm is 100% employee-owned and is certified as an MBE. The firm has received performance awards from Institutional Investor Magazine, including Intermediate-Term Manager of the Year in 2016 and 2015 and Fixed Income Investment Grade Manager of the Year in 2014. In addition, the firm was named 2010 Core Fixed Income Manager of the Year by Emerging Manager Monthly.

Founded in 1995 and becoming part of Man Group in 2010, Man GLG is a discretionary investment engine, offering a diverse range of alternative and long-only investment strategies across equities, credit, fixed income and multi-asset approaches. Man GLG’s investment teams are encouraged to think independently, while sharing and debating ideas, unconstrained by a house view. They are supported by Man Group’s robust infrastructure and technology, as well as deep fundamental research to ensure that fund managers can focus on seeking to generate attractive risk-adjusted performance for clients.

Founded in 2007, Global Evolution has distinguished itself with its singular focus on and long-standing expertise in the sovereign debt of emerging and frontier market countries. Global Evolution’s investment process involves both a top-down approach to assess macroeconomic factors affecting the relationships between developed, emerging and frontier countries, and a bottom-up process to determine the countries in which the portfolio will invest.

IMC is an investment management firm focused on delivering alpha for clients in global equity markets. Based in Solana Beach, California, the firm leverages collective insight within a systematic investment process designed to deliver more consistent and predictable return streams. This investment approach has been applied consistently across all strategies since the inception of the firm in 2014. IMC has a team-driven approach across all its investment strategies and uses a globally integrated portfolio management and research analyst team. All members of the firm’s portfolio management and analyst team function as generalists and all participate in the research of investment ideas. IMC believes this team-driven approach of an integrated investment team helps to position the portfolios in the best ideas across equity markets regardless of country or economic sector. Clients include public and corporate retirement funds, superannuation funds, sub-advisory relationships, foundations, endowments and outsourced chief investment officers.

H&W believes that a value approach to portfolio management can provide superior long-term performance with below average volatility. Investor psychology can lead to irrational decisions resulting in the mispricing of stocks. H&W strives to exploit these opportunities by employing disciplined purchase and sell criteria, rigorous in-house fundamental research and a bottom-up stock selection process with emphasis on tangible valuation support. H&W has four major attributes: they’re experienced (track record of more than 30 years), dedicated (committed to independent, in-depth research), disciplined (consistent, time-proven value-oriented investment process) and independent (majority employee-owned).

Ionic Capital Management LLC (“Ionic”) is an alternative asset manager that employs long volatility, relative value arbitrage, inflation protection and value equity investment strategies on behalf of private and regulated investment funds. Since its inception in 2006, Ionic has been managing proprietary strategies and customized solutions.

Lazard Asset Management LLC, an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Lazard Ltd., offers investors an array of traditional and alternative investment solutions. Lazard’s team-based approach to portfolio management seeks to deliver robust and consistent performance over time, and their strong client relationships enhance their ability to employ their capabilities to their clients’ advantage. Lazard’s bottom-up fundamental investment process seeks to generate strong relative returns over a market cycle by investing in companies with strong and/or improving financial productivity at attractive valuations. Lazard’s distinguishing features include a global footprint, a broad-based team of more than 300 investment personnel worldwide, dedicated in-house research, a focus on security selection in the investment process, distribution across multiple channels and a strong commitment to excellence.

Founded in 1924, MFS is one of the oldest investment management firms in the U.S. Today, MFS is a global investment manager with investment personnel in key financial centers worldwide, serving individuals and institutions in more than 70 countries. MFS leverages its global research platform to identify undervalued, high-quality companies that have sustainable, durable franchises, generate significant free cash flow, maintain strong balance sheets and have strong management teams who are good stewards of capital. Their valuation approach is flexible and they place a strong emphasis on cash flow and returns-based methodologies. MFS focuses on downside risk management at the individual security level.

National Investment Services manages predominantly fixed-income strategies that seek to provide consistent performance and downside protection. NIS has served this mission for more than 25 years by partnering with clients and consultants on their unique objectives using an agile investment process. NIS puts client needs first through employee ownership and a collaborative, team-oriented culture. At the close of 2019, NIS partnered with Resolute Investment Managers, based in Irving, Texas. The partnership ensures employee ownership will continue and that the firm’s focus will remain on clients and their needs. NIS serves clients from offices in Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Ninety One is an active, global investment manager. Their goal is to provide long-term investment returns for clients while making a positive difference to people and the planet. Established in South Africa in 1991 as Investec Asset Management, the firm began as a small start-up offering domestic investments in an emerging market. The firm demerged from Investec Group to become Ninety One in 2020. Proud of their emerging-market roots, Ninety One is committed to developing specialist investment teams organically. Their heritage and approach let them bring a different perspective to active and sustainable investing across equities, fixed income, multi-asset and alternatives to their clients – institutions, advisors and individual investors around the world.

Numeric is a fundamentally driven quantitative investment manager at Man Group plc (“Man”), a global, independent asset manager dedicated to alternative and long-only investing. Numeric has a research-driven culture and employs systematic security selection models underpinned by bottom-up, fundamentally based signals. The team’s highly experienced professionals operate collaboratively, distilling their analytical, data science and investment expertise into systematic processes which are applied across regions, styles and capitalizations. Established in 1989 and located in Boston, Massachusetts, Numeric has been part of Man since 2014.

Shapiro Capital Management LLC (“Shapiro’’), founded in 1990 by Samuel Shapiro and Michael McCarthy, is a professional investment advisory firm based in Atlanta. In April 2017, Shapiro became an indirect, majority-owned subsidiary of Resolute Investment Holdings, LLC. Shapiro focuses on institutional-quality, value-oriented investments and employs a team-oriented investment process that is driven by deep fundamental research and concentrated portfolios.

SSI Investment Management, a boutique, institutional asset management firm founded in 1973, seeks to add value by delivering competitive, risk-adjusted returns for its clients while focusing on safety, consistency and preservation of capital. SSI offers investment solutions using a mix of convertible and equity strategies that may appeal to investors seeking growth while limiting downside risk, especially during volatile and rapidly changing market conditions. The firm applies quantitative disciplines and fundamental research in its management of alternative and traditional portfolios for institutional and high net worth investors.

Stephens Investment Management Group, LLC (“SIMG”) was established in 2005 and specializes in equity investment management focused on small and mid-capitalization growth companies. SIMG is a subsidiary of Stephens Investments Holdings LLC, a privately held and family-owned company.

SiM is an independent and 100% employee-owned company dedicated to providing superior investment management for institutional and individual clients. The Senior High Yield Team members have worked together for almost twenty years and previously managed the Principal High Yield Fund from its inception in 1998 until 2009. SiM analyzes industry fundamentals and company cash flows to take advantage of secular trends and to opportunistically invest in out-of-favor sectors. SiM also invests in alternative investments and instruments across the capital structure. Combined with a long investment horizon, this proven investment approach provides the foundation for achieving long-term client objectives. 

Founded in 1994 by Stephen M. Goddard as the dedicated equity advisor to a publicly traded insurance company, The London Company now provides portfolio management services to a mix of institutional investors. The majority employee-owned firm is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, and is dedicated to delivering superior, consistent returns with lower downside risk.

TwentyFour, a boutique investment firm in New York, provides a global perspective on fixed-income investments that is unique among U.S. managers in the credit sector. The firm is a subsidiary of TwentyFour Asset Management LLP in the U.K., which was founded in 2008 and is wholly owned by Vontobel Holding AG in Switzerland. TwentyFour offers highly transparent products and seeks to achieve risk-adjusted returns while retaining a strong focus on capital preservation. Accordingly, TwentyFour has the capability to use a wide-range of investment tools to pursue the best possible returns while adhering to rigorous, detail-oriented investment guidelines.

Westwood is a focused investment management boutique offering a broad array of investment solutions to institutional investors and financial intermediaries. The firm helps institutions and intermediaries as they seek to achieve their long-term goals through a clients-first mentality and focus on investment outcomes. The U.S. Value Equity team has a multi-decade track record of generating compelling, risk-adjusted returns by investing at the intersection of quality and value.