Q:  Would you give a brief overview of the WHV International Equity Fund? A : Wentworth, Hauser and Violich, a San Francisco-based investment management services firm, launched the WHV International Equity Fund as an open-end mutual fund investment option for the strategy. The Fund is a member of the FundVantage Series Trust. The objective of the International Equity strategy is to provide a portfolio of primarily large capitalization international equity growth stocks that is expected to generate long-term capital appreciation. We also launched an emerging markets equity fund on December 31, 2010. In this strategy, we have a very specific notion to buy quality companies with quality management that have certain dominance in the field and are well run. Q:  How is this product different from other international funds? A : We take a different approach to investing in our international equity fund. The Fund employs a top-down sector allocation approach to investing to generate superior performance, as opposed to a bottom-up and stock selection oriented approach followed by many of our competitors. Traditionally, top-down managers have been top-down by country or region. We focus on the ten global economic sectors, looking for those sectors that we believe are positioned best for the market based on supply/demand characteristics. Capital markets tend to be driven by a fairly narrow group of stocks. Historically speaking, capital markets have “Supercycle” trends. Therefore, our approach is to identify these Supercycle trends that tend to last from seven to twenty-five years and create a portfolio that can benefit from the long-term appreciation defining these cycles. Q:  What core beliefs guide your investment philosophy? A : Our investment philosophy is grounded in the belief that investing in the most attractive global economic sectors can generate superior investment performance. Particular attention is devoted to the identification of investment Supercycles. These are defined as supply and demand imbalances that we believe are likely to persist over time. Q:  Why do you feel that sector-based investing or industry-specific investing is more important than geographic-based investing? A : That is certainly our view in developed markets. With globalization, companies compete across borders and geography doesn’t matter as much as the sector and/or industry classification. However, in emerging markets the country decisions are very important. Q:  What is the fund’s investment process? A : The top-down process begins with analyzing the ten global economic sectors. We are looking for supply-demand imbalances. We identify those sectors where there is strong demand and/or limited supply. Once we identify those sectors that we favor, we drill down to the industry groups that comprise those sectors and here we look for the best growth dynamics. Country analysis is secondary to this process for our International Equity fund. We do look at country factors but the most important decisions are getting the sectors and industries right. We then construct a portfolio of securities in those sectors and industries that we favor to arrive at a portfolio of 30 to 60 stocks. To cite an example of how this process works, at present the energy sector is the one with the largest weight in the portfolio since 2000. The analysis there is very much focused on the demand coming from the emerging markets. On the supply side, there are constraints in the energy space that led us to favor the sector. We then focus on the industry groups within the energy sector. There are three industry groups - integrated oil and gas, exploration and production and then the oilfield services group. We favor the oilfield services group primarily because they have historically been the growth engine of the energy sector and we expect this to continue as the integrated and E&P companies will need the services of these companies to increase production. We have focused on the oilfield service group for the last decade. Our belief is that a portfolio based on developed country companies can add value through the services company because that is where the Western and developed world still have an advantage in terms of technology know-how, as well as research & development. Q:  Would you describe your research process? A : The research process is based on the premise that globalization by economic sectors and categorization of stocks by sectors rather than by country are two dominant global forces. Our research starts with the notion that the emerging market economies are developing and industrializing. What makes it particularly powerful is that in the developed world we have about a billion people whereas in the emerging economies there are approximatley 5.7 billion people. As they begin to embrace capitalism and industrialize, it has a profound impact on the demand for energy and materials. That is the critical big picture or top-down theme that we implement in the portfolio. When we drill down from there and identify the sectors and industries we like within that, we like to get exposure to a number of names that will benefit from the overall Supercycle theme. It is an exposure that is driven by the actual demand from emerging markets which is incremental and again, we concentrate on those companies that have the technology know-how and can utilize that to their business advantage. Q:  What is your buy-and-sell discipline? A : The stock selection is clearly based on several factors which may include the following.. First of all, we are looking for large capitalization companies which have a proven management with a robust balance sheet. Other factors considered includea clear management philosophy in terms of technology, products and services they offer and a large market share that they can defend. Ideally, we are looking to buy companies have the technological advantage to defend themselves. The sell process is very much based on the analysis of supply/demand factors. Once the supply side of the equation begins to supersede demand we will look to shift away from the current theme toward newly emerging imbalances. We sell a stock if the fundamentals of the sector, industry, region, country, or company indicate signs of deterioration, stock reaches relative over-valuation or concerns develop regarding accounting or management. Q:  How do you execute your portfolio construction? A : We tend to have between 30 and 60 names in the portfolio. Other factors in play while constructing the portfolio are that no more than 40% may be invested in any one economic sector, no more than 33% in any specific country, no more than 10% in emerging markets, and the maximum allowable investment in any single issuer 10% at market of total portfolio. The vast majority of our clients measure us against the MSCI-EAFE Index. Q:  How do you define and manage risk? A : We run a fairly concentrated portfolio which increases risk, but has the potential to generate strong returns over the long term.