Our equity investment philosophy is centered on
generating capital appreciation for the investor.
The primary emphasis is on providing the investor
with a degree of capital appreciation, superior to
that of the returns from the equity class as
represented by a market index over the longer
term. Our core investment premise is that the
equity markets are not completely efficient. A
well-organized and thorough research effort
combined with a disciplined portfolio management
approach will enable out performance of the market
index over time. 
A key pillar of our disciplined approach is to
stay true to the mandate of the specific fund as
specified in the offer document under all
circumstances. This is key to generating superior
performance over time even though there could be
times when staying true to the mandate may result
in short-term underperformance. Our investment
philosophy is a matrix framework of Company,
Industry, Economic and Technical analysis. The
equity team will provide many of the inputs for
this framework, but we will also use inputs from
external sources as and when required. This open
framework is combined with an environment that
encourages regular and constant debate; which we
believe leads to superior decision making. 
  
  
Stock categorization
system
The objective of our stock
categorization system is to enable us to identify
stocks that are likely to be the best investments
from within our universe. Each category of stock
has a description of fundamental attributes that
we expect the company to possess. The
categorizations are as follows:
    
        
            | Stock Category
 | Descriptions (eg.)
 | Growth
            Prospects (eg.) | Company Attribute (eg.)
 | Financial
            Parameter (eg.) | 
        
            | Star | Young companies | High growth | Entrepreneur vision,
            scalability | Operating Leverage | 
        
            | Leader | Established companies | In line or better
            than industry | Track record of
            leadership, globally
            competitive | Industry leading
            margin / ROE | 
        
            | Warrior | Young / established
            companies | Better than industry | Unique proposition
            and / or right place,
            right time | Margin & ROE
            expansion | 
        
            | Diamond | Company with
            valuable assets | Low growth | Management intent
            to unlock value | Value of asset /
            business | 
        
            | Frog
            Prince | Company in a
            turnaround situation | Back to growth | Intrinsic strengths
            in core business | P2P, ROE expansion | 
        
            | Shotgun | Opportunistic
            investment | Positive surprise | Corporate event,
            restructuring,
            earnings news | Event visibility | 
        
            | Commodities | Call on the cycle is
            paramount | Positive | Integration, cost
            efficiency, globally
            competitive | Profit leverage | 
        
            | *  P2P - Path to
            Profit, ROE - Return on Equity | 
        
            | Stocks
            that fit into one of these categories typically
            display superior return profiles, but more
            importantly this enables fund managers to focus on
            the attributes that drive stock price performance
            and keep a watch for red flags. |