Mr. Stuzin: We are a Baltimore-based firm, founded in 1993. We were originally an in-house money management arm of an old Baltimore-based investment banking firm, Alex. Brown & Sons. Alex. Brown was acquired in 1997 by Bankers Trust, which in turn was gobbled up by Deutsche Bank in 1998. We decided that being a part of a very large global firm didn't make a whole lot of sense for us or, more important, for our clients, so we became an independent firm in 1998. We currently have approximately 13 billion of total assets under management. The large cap growth strategy that we will chat about today has approximately 2 billion in assets. We have a research team of approximately 20 analysts and a full complement of portfolio managers who manage strategies that include large cap growth, large cap value, small cap growth, small cap value, flexible value, green investing and fixed income. Going right into the large cap growth process, I like to say that it's a consistent growth company strategy. We are looking for companies with very high absolute growth rates and typically a minimum expected earnings growth rate of 14% over a three- to five-year period. The numerical importance of 14 is that it's double the long-term earnings growth rate of the broad market as measured by the S&P 500. We really only want to fish in a pond that has very fast growing companies. We are agnostic as to where we find growth, so this is not a sector fund. We spend most of our time trying to understand the underlying growth drivers of the companies in which we invest. Our view has always been if you dig deep enough, you can find good growth businesses in virtually every sector of the economy. Perhaps the most important aspect of the process is our complete focus on fundamental analysis. We believe in the importance of having a deep research team, with each team member having a thorough domain expertise. We divide the world up by economic sectors, but, having said that, we really do want our analysts and portfolio managers to be broad thinkers. I think of my role as overseeing a very collaborative process where it's not just an analyst saying, "Gee, give me a thumbs up or thumbs down on this idea." We work much more closely together than that. The portfolios that we run are very concentrated. We hold approximately 30 to 35 names, so mistakes can be very, very serious. We tend to spend a great deal of time on due diligence before a stock gets into the portfolio, and we rarely hold less than a percentage and a half of any particular name. We want to have the courage of our convictions, and we want to own full positions in those superior growth companies in order to make our investors money. There are a couple of other things I can mention with regard to the process. We will go as far down as 2 billion in market capitalization, so we're comfortable with smaller names in the portfolio. I would also stress that we try to avoid aspects of what I like to call the "inertial" momentum investor. We think this is very important. In our view, large cap growth stock investors have been painted too broadly as a bit reckless since the market collapse of 2000, 2001 and 2002. Before the collapse, people were just looking for hot stocks. Momentum was the style de jour. We completely understand that criticism and believe our process is very much the opposite of that mentality. We are much more interested in making clients money in a very risk-adjusted way. Like I said, we are the opposite of what I would call the inertial momentum investor. Every stock in our portfolio has an upside and downside target. And the simple math of understanding the percentage of upside appreciation potential versus downside depreciation risk is a very important component in how we actually manage money. In a sense, it's a two-step approach. One is to uncover great growth franchises. The other is to position stocks in the portfolio in order to optimize the risk/reward trade-off. Even for a concentrated portfolio, this approach has given us a risk profile over the years that is quite attractive relative to other large cap growth managers. I think that generally reflects our buyside strategy and how it works.
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