At Limestone, we adhere to a single set of beliefs that we apply consistently across all funds and investment programs. The philosophy is the key to the success of our investment strategies and to the success of our clients. We base our investing approach on the following beliefs:

• Independent, fundamental, bottom-up research. We believe that solid research is fundamental to sound investment decisions. Limestone employs a team of experienced analysts and portfolio managers who regularly gather in-depth, first-hand information on markets and companies in Eastern Europe

• Long term outlook matters. The breakdown of Soviet Union and following re-unification and convergence of Eastern and Western Europe is the most important geopolitical and economic shift in recent European history. This process has presented once in a life time investment opportunity for active emerging market investors, and a challenge for dedicated pan-Europe and global investors, who have had to readjust their benchmarks and portfolios. The large scale readjustments have only just began. Our philosophy is to be patient investors, not market timers.

• Benchmarks do not reflect the real opportunities. Most equity indices are focusing on the selected blue-chips in major markets. We work on covering a significantly larger universe of companies, which enables us to locate new alpha sources and more efficiently diversify the portfolios. We never use benchmarks in our portfolio construction process.

• Experience matters. Limestone team is built on individuals who have more than 10 years experience of operating on Eastern European capital markets. The team has a pedigree of building a successful EUR 650mio active Eastern Europe equity business and a strong track record. We recognize that excessive turnover of people within an investment management firm can impede investment objectives and have thus promoted continuity by granting equity ownership to all key team members.

Our team seeks to identify undervalued companies, whose stock price will rise over time to reflect the value and growth potential of the underlying company. Thus the investment process is based on the bottom-up fundamental research aimed to assign fair value targets and identify companies that meet our criteria. In evaluating potential investments we focus on the following characteristics:

• Quality and commitment of the company management
• Absolute valuation of selected stocks based on DCF
• Relative valuation based on benchmarking against regional and international peer groups
• Utilisation of sector-specific valuation metrics where applicable

Limestone looks investment opportunities from the universe of ca 1,000 Eastern European companies, which is automatically updated to reflect the changes in the market. We apply the quantitative liquidity screens to narrow the universe down to 600 stocks that form the investable universe, which is then put through qualitative screens by the research team. The Focus Stock List, which consists of ca 300 stocks, is broken down by industry sectors and finally assigned a fair value target. High importance is assigned to company visits and building close relationships with the portfolio companies.

The investment team is planned to carry out dual roles in both research and in portfolio management. All the portfolio managers have a sector research responsibility, which is combined with a role in portfolio construction for different strategies Limestone manages. We put great value on teamwork during the research and decision making process but do not believe in group decision making. Therefore the ultimate investment responsibility lies with the dedicated fund manager responsible for a specific strategy or investment product.