Richard Andrew Mills

VRS employs various strategies including Public Equities, Fixed Income, Short-Term Investments, Private Equity, Real Assets, Credit Strategies, and Strategic Opportunities. The firm maintains a long-term investment horizon and asset allocation policy for the management of fund assets. They invest with top-tier alternative investment managers (private investments and hedge funds) that consistently generate strong net returns.

Shenandoah Asset Management's (SAM) is a US equity value manager. The firm's investment products include US mid-cap equity, US large-cap value equity, US custom equity, US large-cap core and US mega-cap. Their investment approach is based on systematic quantitative analysis, modeling and a risk-controlled portfolio construction discipline. SAM's stock selection process relies on a fundamentally-based quantitative algorithm that is driven by earnings expectations, insider transactions valuation and cash flow measures. The firm preserves value by using alternative trading strategies to control transaction costs and bring the model's excess returns to the bottom line. SAM tends to invest in the stocks of US mid-cap companies in the finance, electronic technology and consumer non-durables sectors. The firm maintains a high turnover rate. The firm's mid-cap equity strategy is a US equity strategy that is managed versus the Russell Midcap Index. Their methodology can be applied to any reasonable US equity index. The majority of value added by the strategy is from stock selection. SAM looks for companies in which earnings are growing faster than consensus expectations and that have strong cash flow to support continued earnings growth. They also look for situations in which corporate insiders are buying their own stock. SAM invests primarily in undervalued stocks. SAM's large-cap value strategy uses the same approach as the firm's mid-cap strategy. It is benchmarked against the Russell 1000 Value Index. The firm's custom mid-cap strategy uses the same approach as the firm's mid-cap strategy. It is benchmarked against the S&P MidCap 400 Index. SAM's large-cap core strategy results in a combined investment in the firm's mega-cap and mid-cap strategies. The combined strategy utilizes the same stock selection and portfolio construction process as their active strategies. It is managed versus the Russell 1000 Index. Their mega-cap strategy utilizes the same stock selection and portfolio construction process as their active strategies. It is managed versus the Russell Top 200 Index.

Piedmont Investment Advisors employs an objective and disciplined investment process that seeks to generate consistent excess returns over a full market cycle. The firm's risk-aware equity investment philosophy focuses on extracting alpha from three interconnected processes: Quantitative, Fundamental, and Macro. They believe that this combination offers the best opportunity to outperform in the long term and maximize the return per unit of risk for their clients. All of Piedmont’s equity products use this approach with each component used in varying degrees for each product. The firm's Strategic Core strategy is managed using a fundamental process but it utilizes quantitative models as a source of idea generation. Macro insights are taken into consideration in the process of portfolio construction. For their Market Plus, Optimized SMID Core and Optimized Small Cap Core, the quantitative models are the primary drivers of stock selection and portfolio construction while fundamental and macro insights are used as inputs for risk control in the portfolio construction process. Smart Beta products are managed using factor based weighting schemes. Piedmont’s Russell Top 200 Index strategy, S&P 500 Index Strategy and S&P 600 Index Strategy use full replication methodology to generate index like returns. Piedmont constructs customized, yield-advantaged fixed income portfolios with the expectation of outperformance over a full market cycle. Their yield-advantaged style seeks to dampen performance volatility by encompassing moderate duration shifts, strategically overweighting spread sectors, and being opportunistic along the yield curve. These objectives are synthesized and implemented within the context of a quantitative backdrop. Active management connotes a constant assessment of relative value, that is, whether expected returns are commensurate with the level of risk taken. Piedmont's bias is typically an overweight in the spread sectors. They construct well-diversified portfolios to give clients the broad benefit of owning these sectors while remaining mindful of not unduly exposing the portfolio to any one issue. Conversely, security selection is emphasized, but within the context of its overall risk versus expected return.

Functions as a College/University

Functions as a College/University