Investment advisor: Ashmore Investment Advisors Limited
Launch date*: Class A-March 1, 2021, Class C-March 1, 2021, Institutional Class-February 26, 2021
Expense ratio: Class A-1.12%; Class C-1.87%; Institutional Class-0.87%
Investment objective: The fund seeks to maximize total return.
Fundamental investment strategy: The Fund seeks to achieve its objective by investing principally in debt instruments of Corporate issuers (as defined below), which may be denominated principally in Hard Currencies (i.e., the U.S. dollar or any currency of a nation in the G-7), focusing on issuers that the Investment Manager believes satisfy the ESG Criteria. A Corporate issuer is an issuer located in an Emerging Market Country or an issuer deriving at least 50% of its revenues or profits from goods produced or sold, investments made, or services performed in one or more Emerging Market Countries or that has at least 50% of its assets in one or more Emerging Market Countries. For these purposes, Corporate issuers do not include Sovereigns or governmental agency issuers, but may include corporate or other business entities in which a Sovereign or governmental agency or entity may have, indirectly or directly, an interest, including a majority or greater ownership interest (e.g., CITIC, Qatar Telecom). Emerging Market Country means any country included by the International Monetary Fund in its list of Emerging and Developing Economies, any country which is considered a low-income, lower-middle-income, or upper-middle-income economy by the World Bank, and any country that is included in an Emerging Market Index.
The Fund may invest in debt instruments of all types issued by Corporate issuers, whether subordinated or unsubordinated, secured or unsecured, quoted or unquoted, rated or unrated, or floating rate or fixed rate. These may include, without limitation, bonds, debentures, notes, convertible securities, commercial paper, loans and related assignments and participations, trade claims, bank certificates of deposit, fixed time deposits, bankers’ acceptances, and money market instruments, including money market funds denominated in U.S. dollars or other currencies. The Fund may invest in companies of any market capitalization, and its allocations among small-, mid- and large-capitalization issuers may vary significantly over time.
The Fund normally seeks to maintain a weighted average portfolio duration of between 2 and 10 years.
Although the Fund may gain most of its investment exposure to Corporate issuers directly, the Fund may utilize various derivative instruments and related strategies, including exclusively, to gain exposure to one or more Corporate issuers or other assets. The Fund may utilize derivatives of all types and may invest in, without limitation, call and put options (including options on futures contracts), futures and forward contracts (including contracts related to currencies), and swap agreements (including total return, interest rate and credit default swaps) and other related instruments with respect to individual bonds and other securities, indices and baskets of securities, interest rates and currencies, and credit-linked notes as part of its principal investment strategies. The Fund expects to primarily use derivatives for hedging or efficient portfolio management purposes, but may also use them to increase the Fund’s investment exposure beyond that which it could achieve by investing directly in more conventional securities. The Fund may also invest directly in foreign currencies for hedging or other investment purposes.
The Fund may invest in convertible debt instruments and equity securities related to convertible securities or warrants the Fund holds or has held, as well as acquire and hold equity securities, including warrants. The Fund may invest in the securities of other investment companies, including exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”) and other pooled vehicles, if the investment companies invest principally in the types of investments in which the Fund may invest directly. The Fund may also lend its portfolio securities, borrow money for investment and other purposes, and enter into repurchase and reverse repurchase agreement transactions.
The Fund will not invest more than 25% of its net assets in any one Emerging Market Country. In addition, the Fund will not invest more than 20% of its net assets in investments denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar.
The Fund may invest in obligations of any credit quality, including obligations that are in default or that are subject to insolvency proceedings. The Fund may invest without limitation in debt securities that are of below investment grade or that are unrated but judged by the Investment Manager to be of comparable quality (“junk bonds”).
The Fund observes a policy to normally invest at least 80% of its net assets (plus borrowings made for investment purposes) in bonds and other debt instruments of Corporate issuers (as defined above) that the Investment Manager believes satisfy the ESG Criteria. The Fund’s investments in derivatives and other synthetic instruments that have economic characteristics similar to these investments will be counted toward satisfaction of the Fund’s 80% investment policy.
In managing the Fund, the Investment Manager’s fixed income and asset allocation investment committee (the “Investment Committee”), together with the relevant portfolio managers (together with the Investment Committee, the “Investment Team”), employs a largely top-down, active and value-driven investment approach in analyzing emerging markets and currencies. The Fund’s investment approach includes an emphasis on the influence of politics (both local and international). The Investment Team combines its top-down approach with an analytically driven, bottom-up approach to making purchase and sale decisions with respect to individual corporate credits. The Investment Team seeks opportunities in selected emerging markets that it believes may benefit from significant positive changes, such as political and economic reforms, increases in capital inflows and investor confidence, and seeks to invest in issuers in Corporate sectors it expects will benefit from such developments and associated economic development and growth.
The Investment Team’s investment process focuses on global and emerging markets fundamentals and considers factors such as liquidity and risk management at the macro level. The Investment Team utilizes the Investment Manager’s broad and current knowledge of important investment areas in various Emerging Market Countries gained, in part, through research, experience, long-standing relationships with reliable local firms and, where appropriate, visits by its investment personnel to countries in their respective regions of responsibility.
In response to adverse market, economic, political or other conditions, the Fund may deviate from its principal strategies by making temporary investments of some or all of its assets in various instruments, including short-term, high-quality fixed income securities denominated in any currency, cash, cash equivalents, money market funds, and other similar funds. The Fund may not achieve its investment objective when it does so. The Fund may also invest a portion of its assets in such investments and instruments on a short term or temporary basis to manage its cash positions or otherwise manage the Fund efficiently.
The Investment Manager may engage in active and frequent trading of the Fund’s portfolio securities to achieve the Fund’s investment objective. The Fund may pay transaction costs, such as the bid/asked spread on purchases and sales of securities, when it buys and sells securities (or “turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover rate may indicate higher transaction costs and may result in higher taxes for you if your Fund shares are held in a taxable account. These costs, which are not reflected in Annual Fund Operating Expenses or in the Examples, may adversely affect the Fund’s investment performance.
Sustainable investing approach: The Investment Manager defines and assesses ESG Criteria on the basis of an issuer’s performance against the following metrics:
-Environment: Global and local impact, greenhouse gas emissions, water and waste management, incidents of environmental pollution, energy management and use of green energy, policies and innovations to limit negative impact.
-Social: Employee diversity and inclusion, customer welfare, human rights, community relations, labour practices, health and safety, supply chain management, materiality of philanthropy spend, product quality and safety.
-Governance: Governance structure, transparency and disclosure, representation of minority interests, public listing and reporting, management accessibility, key performance indicators used to design long-term incentive schemes, policies and strategies to mitigate the impact of ESG risks.
ESG Scoring Process means the scoring process of the Investment Manager whereby the Investment Manager issues a score to each issuer, based on their historical and current performance, taking into account the environmental, social or governance risks that an issuer may present and the performance of each issuer against ESG Criteria. Individual ESG criteria will generally be given equal weight. The process relies on information drawn from a range of data sources, including data from third party service providers, which is subject to change.
The Fund seeks to avoid investing in issuers that the Adviser determines have significant involvement (i.e., more than 10% of revenues) in the manufacture, distribution or sale of fossil fuels or tobacco products and in gambling, pornography or defense (including controversial weapons) industries, or other issuers that engage in business practices that the Adviser determines to be sub-standard from an ESG or sustainability perspective in relation to their industry or sector.
*Class A Shares and Class C Shares of the Funds are not currently being offered for sale or exchange to any investors.
Notes of Explanation: For mutual funds, expense ratio may vary by share class and launch date applies to the launch date of the earliest share class. Sources: Fund prospectus or other offering document, as disclosed.
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