Sumali Sanyal

Loomis Sayles bases their overall investment approach on the premise that their disciplined, research-based investment strategies can identify market inefficiencies that can lead to consistent outperformance of benchmarks. The firm's fixed-income research team seeks to identify attractive securities and assign ratings to various issues. Their equity investment approach is based on their belief that equity markets are inefficient. Loomis Sayles employs an intensive bottom-up investment analysis with the goal of delivering superior risk adjusted performance.

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

Xponance provides equity and fixed income investment strategies through multiple platforms, on both a discretionary and non-discretionary basis. The firm aims to deliver long-term results that maximize returns per unit of risk, leveraging skill-based investment decisions. They perform bottom-up analysis on the corporate market as well as other spread sectors.