Deals & People April 15, 2008

Vanguard Adds Adviser to Two Equity Funds

Vanguard has added Baillie Gifford Overseas Ltd. as an adviser to two different equity funds.
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Baillie Gifford joins current Vanguard Global Equity Fund advisers Acadian Asset Management, AllianceBernstein L.P., and Marathon Asset Management LLP in the $6.9 billion fund (ticker: VHGEX). Baillie Gifford teams with Turner Investment Partners in the management of the $980 million Vanguard Growth Equity Fund (ticker: VGEQX).

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Baillie Gifford has advised portions of the $18.4 billion Vanguard International Growth Fund (VWIGX) and the $1.9 billion International Portfolio of the Vanguard Variable Insurance Fund (VVIF) since 2003. According to a Vanguard press release, Baillie Gifford employs a long-term oriented, valuation-sensitive growth philosophy. Its bottom-up approach seeks high-quality companies whose earnings and cash flows increase faster than the market.

Baillie Gifford’s U.S. investment team, which will manage assets in the Growth Equity Fund, is led by Mick Brewis, a partner and member of the Investment Policy Committee who has been with the firm since 1985. The team that will manage Baillie Gifford’s portion of the Global Equity Fund is led by Charles Plowden, a joint senior partner and chief of investment staff who has been with Baillie Gifford since 1983. Both teams work out of Baillie Gifford’s Edinburgh, Scotland, headquarters.

Baillie Gifford is among the largest independently owned investment management firms in the United Kingdom. Organized as a partnership with 100% ownership disbursed among 30 active partners, Baillie Gifford has approximately U.S. $110 billion in assets under management in global equity, EAFE and balanced mandates. Approximately U.S. $12 billion of that is in U.S. assets, including U.S. portions of global products.

Fourteen of Vanguard’s actively managed stock funds are multimanaged. Vanguard has relationships with 24 external advisory firms from around the world that manage approximately $357 billion. Vanguard manages nearly $1.25 trillion in U.S. mutual fund assets, including more than $392 billion in employer-sponsored retirement plans.

The Markets April 15, 2008

S&P Launches African Benchmarks

Standard&Poor's has launched three new benchmark and investable indices designed to provide investors with access to Africa's developing equity markets, as well as being a measurement tool for the performance of these markets.
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The S&P Pan Africa Index covers 12 African markets: Botswana, Cote D’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. The S&P Africa Frontier Index covers eight smaller frontier markets from sub-Saharan Africa, including Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

The indices aim to capture 80% of the total market capitalization of each country, and thus provide investors with a comprehensive benchmark on African markets, according to S&P. The S&P African Frontier Index gained over 52% over the last three years, while the S&P Pan Africa Index has gained over 18% in the same period, according to the company.

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The third new offering is the S&P Africa 40 Index, designed to provide tradable exposure to 40 of the largest and most liquid companies that operate purely in Africa. Companies must be domiciled in Africa or have the majority of their assets and operations in Africa. The index is dominated by companies from the financial, materials, telecommunications and industrials sectors, with MTN Group (South Africa), Orascom Construction (Egypt), First Quantum Minerals (Zambia) and Standard Bank Group (South Africa) among the largest constituents. On a historical basis, the S&P Africa 40 recorded returns of 36.35% from March 2007 to March 2008, and 49.78% annualized on a three year basis, according to S&P.

For more information on the indices, please visit www.standardandpoors.com/indices

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